Michael Gove has had a tough week. Amidst his ever-emerging plans to cut expenditure in state education, he made an error. If one were weighing up the scale of the error against the question “how sizeable was this error?”, the answer would at least be “moderately sizeable”.

When Labour were in power, they promised that schools would be able to rebuild and refurbish their premises to provide the high level of education expected of them. Under the coalition government, they have been told that it would probably be impossible for them to do so.

A document was produced listing the schools which would not be able to proceed with redevelopment, causing those happily omitted from it to celebrate. As it emerged, this document contained many errors, and the celebration from some schools would turn out to be misfounded.

This error, which Michael Gove had responsibility for, rather angered some people.

The anger is understandable. Many schools need the funds to rebuild or redevelop facilities which cannot cope with the demands placed on them. Alongside other cuts to essentials such as the provision of Teaching Assistants and the financial implications of NOT becoming an academy, this is disastrous news for many schools.

One MP in the House of Commons was particularly angry. Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, was particularly so. In a verbal onslaught in front of a packed House of Commons, he responded to Gove’s apology by labelling him a ‘miserable pipsqueak’ at the top of his voice. It’s worth a watch.

As regular readers of my Gove-related posts (and those unfortunate enough to hear me talk at them) will know, I’m not a fan of Michael Gove’s policies. I believe the academies plan would be harmful to state schooling. I believe that choosing not to extend provision of free school meals is a mistake. I believe that a return to ‘the basics’ is a near-jurassic way to view the priorities of primary education. On this occasion however, I will defend him.

Anyone in a position of authority should be responsible, and accept that they are a role model for others. Michael Gove, being in charge of education, must be particularly angelic in his conduct. In apologising for an error he made, with sincerity whilst others jeered at him, he did something which was difficult but correct.

Tom Watson acted in a way which set a poor example. He raised his voice in order to point and jeer his insult across the Commons, in a way that a playground bully might wish to humiliate their victim in front of their peers. This is a dreadful example, and teachers would expect pupils to behave in a more respectful way from the very start of their schooling.

The speaker duly asked him to retract his comment, which he did only out of ‘deference to the speaker’. Frankly, he should have done it out of respect to the insulted individual, who deserves to be able to work without being childishly mocked. I am astounded that a man of Watson’s expertise would consider this acceptable.

A pupil in school who attempted to resolve a dispute in this way would spend a considerable time afterwards comtemplating his actions, and living with the implications of acting in such a way. Maybe we need to send a letter home to Mr Watson’s parents, or consider that he should spend his next few breaktimes reflecting on his behaviour.

With honourable restraint, Gove said that he understood Watson’s passion.

By all means, if Michael Gove’s policies are ill-advised (and I rather think they are), they should be scrutinised and deconstructed. However, if he makes a mistake and apologises for it, we should have the good grace to accept it and continue with the important task of building an ever-improving state educational system.

The next few years will be tough for all of us involved in state education, and we need to reserve our energies for constructive criticism and exemplary practice.

So many modern Conservatives idolise Benjamin Disraeli, the nineteenth century dandy-turned-statesman, who supposedly first remarked about the ‘three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics’. I have no idea if our Minister for Education, Michael Gove, is of the Disraeli-worshipping cult, but he knows a thing or two about massaging statistics and validating Dizzy’s observation.

One of his key policies has been to urge ‘outstanding’ schools, as defined by Ofsted, to become an academy. Academies operate with more freedom from their Local Education Authority, and can be run by private groups. Although they are not currently able to do so, Michael Gove has stated that he has ‘no ideological objection’ to them making a profit as they do so.

Indeed, such has been his zeal to persuade them that each outstanding school has received a phone call from the DfE to persuade them of the benefits of doing so. But alas, a cheeky discrepancy was present which Michael Gove has used to make his ideas seem far more popular than they may be amongst headteachers.

Many headteachers, being open-minded and conscientious, will have requested information about becoming an academy simply in order to keep abreast of what the government’s plans seem to be. I daresay that some will have done this knowing that they would never intend to become an academy, but it is simply good practice to see what direction educational policy keeps taking.

However, in order to request any information about this process, you had to ‘declare an interest’ (in the government’s words), and alas, any school which simply wanted to know about the plans had effectively ‘declared an interest in becoming an academy’, and are used in Michael Gove’s statistics to indicate the popularity of his plans.

This, Mr. Gove, is cheeky. Funnily enough, educational professionals tend to be rather clever, and notice this kind of sly trick. It is not appreciated. In future, I think it would be more advisable to conduct himself with the honesty and integrity which we expect our pupils to display on a daily basis.

In the months running up to the election, I was to be heard arguing that the grim possibility of Michael Gove being in charge of education was reason enough to make sure that we would not have a Conservative government.

Amidst the uncertainty following the election results, there were rumours that we would avoid this dire situation: Michael Gove himself stated that he would be willing to forego a cabinet post, and there were rumours that David Laws was all set to take charge of education. In hindsight, Laws would presumably not have lasted anyhow.

Confirmation came soon enough – and I remember being sat on a train in Kings Lynn station when I heard the news – that Michael Gove would indeed be the head honcho of educational policy for the foreseeable future. I was tempted to hold a memorial service for primary education there and then.

After all of this, I couldn’t help but feel that he started fairly well. Although I didn’t think it necessary to wholly rebrand the Department for Children, Schools and Families, at least the Department For Education is easy to remember and to-the-point.

What’s more, the General Teaching Council (GTC) didn’t seem to be doing a wonderful job as an independent regulatory body, and they were axed. Even the unions agreed that this was fair.

There was also a very brief period in which all of Michael Gove’s bizarre talk of free schools and academies seemed to have died down, and it looked as though his oddball scheme might be lost to ConDem compromise. This would have been no bad thing, but alas, like a persistent fungal infection, it has made an unpleasant return.

Conservative MPs often have a more traditional notion of education, and insist on emphasising the importance of ‘the basics’, a.k.a. ‘the three Rs’ (reading, writing and arithmetic). You’d think therefore that Michael Gove would have done the maths behind his scheming, but it seems increasingly as though he did not.

An article on the BBC website today talks of his announcement that plans to rebuild and refurbish schools are, by and large, being scrapped. In this article, it notes that the average cost of refurbishing a school is £4 million. This seems a tad hefty, until you consider the cost of building a whole new school, which is exactly what would need doing in each instance of somebody taking Gove up on his free school offer. A new school, it seems, tends to cost £25 million.

You do the maths; I’m not sure Gove bothered to.Free schools are far from free, and cutting the extension of free school lunches for poorer families will not cover this expenditure, let alone its gross unfairness.

Two big questions remain for Michael Gove and his free school plan. Firstly: Where will the money come from? Many people involved with education would argue that funding priorities lie elsewhere, and after all, government departments are supposed to be cutting back. Secondly: Why bother? There is plenty of evidence to suggest that free schools do not provide better education than our existing ones.

Mr. Gove, I await your answers.

Michael Gove has been quick to act since becoming the Secretary of State for Education. Almost immediately, the Department for Children, Schools and Families was rebranded from its friendly rainbow logo to a sterner-looking Department for Education one.

DCSF logo (out with the old)

DfE logo (in with the new)

Shortly after this, Gove went on a quango extermination programme, witnessing the deaths of the General Teaching Council, Becta (a technology in education thing) and the QCDA.

GTC logo (Byebye GTC)

Becta logo (So long, Becta)

QCDA logo (Adieu, QCDA)

All of which was not truly disastrous – none of this would necessarily affect teaching too much, and could be confined to restructuring in the upper echelons of state education management.

But today something more irritating happened. Let me explain something I did first – I compiled a ‘medium term plan’ based on what the children would be learning and how it ties in with the curriculum. I did this during half term. I used the ‘New Primary Curriculum’, which was released this year.

Big mistake. Having literally handed in the plan today, I’ve managed to hand in the plan on the same day of the curriculum it was based on being axed. Going to the website of the New Primary Curriculum today, I was met with this:

Ministers confirmed on 7 June 2010 that they will not proceed with the last Government’s proposed new primary curriculum, which was based on a review led by Sir Jim Rose. The new curriculum was due to be taught in schools from September 2011, but the relevant clause in the Children, Schools and Families Bill did not successfully pass through the last Parliament.

Information about the new primary curriculum has been removed from this site.

Bummer. Michael Gove has to be careful now; he’s starting to mess with what teachers are spending their time trying to do – teach. It’s hard to predict what he’ll do next. We shall see.