Coalition faces new split amid claims of ‘politicised’ Ofsted

The Lib Dems have warned they will not accept a “Tory donor ideologue” to chair the watchdog amid reports that Theodore Agnew, an insurance magnate who worked closely with Mr Gove before the 2010 general election, was being lined up to replace the Labour peer, Baroness Morgan of Huyton.

The Education Secretary insisted the appointment would be made on merit and that it would be “quite wrong” to rule out a suitable candidate simply because he was a Conservative.

“I want to make sure that we have the widest range of candidates and I don’t think anyone should be ruled out on the basis of their political allegiance,” he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show.

“If someone is a distinguished former Labour minister and they want to put their hat in the ring, then I would look favourably on that. If there’s a distinguished Liberal Democrat educationalist, great. If there’s someone who’s a Conservative, why should they be ruled out just because they are a Conservative? I think that would be quite wrong.”

The Lib Dems were already angry with Mr Gove over his surprise decision not to reappoint Lady Morgan for a second term.

Mr Gove’s Lib Dem deputy, the Schools Minister David Laws, was said to be “absolutely furious” at what he saw as a blatant attempt to “politicise” Ofsted.

A source close to Mr Laws said: “The decision to get rid of Sally Morgan had absolutely nothing to do with her abilities, or even education policy, and everything to do with Michael Gove’s desire to get his own people on board.

“David Laws is absolutely determined not to let Michael undermine the independence of this vital part of the education system.”

Mr Gove denied Lady Morgan had been removed because she was Labour, saying she had done a “fantastic job” at Ofsted but that it was “good corporate practice” to regularly “refresh” the leadership of such organisations.

Conservative Andrew Percy, MP for Brigg and Goole and a former teacher, described the criticism of Mr Gove as “completely staggering”. He said: “When we appointed a Labour appointee to head it up nobody accuses it of politicisation then. Similarly, we had nearly 80 per cent of these public appointees to public offices were Labour in the last decade, nobody complained.

“You only have to look at the Environment Agency and the Food Standards Agency, they are all headed up by former Labour MPs, nobody complained. They seemed perfectly capable people of doing the job. The fact is that of politically active, public appointees, the overwhelming majority were Labour.”

Labour’s shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said the Lib Dems shared responsibility for what was happening at Ofsted.

Mr Gove will today praise the progress made by schools such as the Thornhill Community Academy in Dewsbury, subject of Channel Four’s Educating Yorkshire series, as he vows to break down the “Berlin Wall” between state and private schools in education.

In a keynote speech, Mr Gove will say it is his ambition to raise standards in the state schools in England to the point where they are indistinguishable from their fee-paying counterparts.

Addressing the London Academy of Excellence, he will say the evidence shows “beyond any reasonable doubt” that English state education is starting to show a “sustained and significant improvement”.

“When Channel Four make documentaries about great comprehensives – academies – in Essex and Yorkshire, when BBC3 make heroes out of tough young teachers, when even Tatler publishes a guide to the best state schools – you know tectonic plates have started to shift,” he will say.