After all, the Liberal Democrats had fought the general election on a platform of direct opposition to both free schools and the extension of the academy programme—principles overwhelmingly affirmed at their autumn 2010 conference.
Michael Gove’s first year in office was marked by a number of embarrassing errors and U-turns. Early estimates of the number of schools that wished to convert to academy status were overblown: not over a thousand, as Gove first excitedly suggested, but a mere 153—although the numbers would later climb. Then, in a gleeful speech to the House of Commons in early July, Gove announced the cancellation of Labour’s school-building programme, Building Schools for the Future. The new minister waxed lyrical on the ‘massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy’. A total of 706 projects were considered too far advanced to be abandoned, 719 projects were to be axed, while 123 academy schemes were under review. Within a few days Gove was back in the Commons, forced to issue a grovelling apology; having announced that building projects would still go ahead in Derby, the West Midlands, Northamptonshire, Peterborough, Doncaster, Greenwich, Staffordshire, Wiltshire, Lancashire and Bexley, in fact all these were to be axed.
Normally mild-mannered head teachers and loyal backbenchers were roused to real anger at the brutal speed and apparent carelessness of the government’s handling of the cuts in the school building programme. Tory MPs in Croydon, West Yorkshire and Kent, facing cancelled building projects in their constituencies, made special representations to the new minister. Heather Duggan, assistant head teacher at Liverpool’s St John Bosco Art College, told the BBC: ‘We were just floored.’ When Liverpool’s cabinet member for education and children’s services, Councillor Jane Corbett, visited the school to try to soften the blow, the students asked her: ‘How could the government be allowed to do this, to destroy young peoples’ futures?’6 On a sweltering day in July, a packed Central Methodist Hall in Westminster, London, heard impassioned speeches from parents, trade union leaders and politicians. The message on one placard—Building Schools for the Favoured—neatly encapsulated the mood of the moment.
Before the end of May, Parliament was presented with a new Academies Bill that, in the words of the BBC, presaged ‘the most radical overhaul of schools in England for a generation’. England’s secondary and primary schools were to be offered the chance to convert to academy status, with institutions already judged ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted to be fast-tracked through the process without consultation with staff, parents or the wider community; free schools could be set up on the same independent basis. ‘Not since the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 has legislation other than that intended to counter terrorism, or deal with economic crisis, been rushed through all parliamentary stages in quite this fashion’, teachers’ union leader Christine Blower told her union conference later that year. There was widespread criticism of the Bill, particularly its limited provision for consultation.7 Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords, uneasy at the pace of change, pushed through some minor amendments on consultation, safeguarding provision for children with special educational needs and freedom of information.
Spending cuts were to prove a key part of the school revolution jigsaw. Clear parallels were emerging with welfare and health, where government policy was developing a similarly toxic mix of radical, fast-paced, structural change and slashed spending. In the summer, the government had already announced swingeing cuts to local authority budgets which were soon to filter through to schools. In the October Comprehensive Spending Review, while the dedicated schools budget was marginally increased by 0.1 per cent (not enough to keep pace with inflation), and an additional £2.5 billion was pledged for a new ‘pupil premium’, an extra sum per pupil for children from low-income families, the overall Department for Education budget fell. Some of the main savings, like the 60 per cent cut to the school building programme and the abolition of a number of education quangos, including the General Teaching Council and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, had already been publicised, as had the axing of the Child Trust funds and one-to-one tuition. The government now announced that it would also scrap the Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA), a subsidy of up to £30 a week that allowed many students from poorer homes to stay on at school, and cut £162 million from the School PE and Sports Strategy that had up to now been ring-fenced, to fund 450 schools sport partnerships.
There was public dismay at both these abolitions. Getting rid of the schools sport partnerships was ‘an act of gross stupidity’, one partnership manager told the Daily Telegraph. Under public pressure, Michael Gove restored most of the budget for school sports; but there were reports that he had partly funded this U-turn by deciding instead to abolish Bookstart, an imaginative scheme to offer free books to nearly 3.5 million children at three key ages, from pre-school to the end of primary. A fresh bout of outrage greeted the Bookstart announcement in December: Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate, accused the government of behaving like ‘Scrooge at his worst’, and best-selling author Ian McEwan declared himself ‘appalled’ at the move. In response, Department of Education officials were dispatched on Boxing Day to meet with Viv Bird, CEO of Booktrust, which administers the Bookstart scheme, to announce the continuation of funding.8 In March 2011, Gove restored a third of the budget for EMA, although this did not stop the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development calling on the government to restore the whole amount in the interests of fairness.9 The November 2010 vote to triple tuition fees, despite explicit pre-election promises by the Liberal Democrats to oppose such a move—and widespread, sometimes violent, street protests—contributed significantly to the darkening of the public mood, and the mounting fear and cynicism about public sector reform.
Nothing, however, would stop the Coalition as it steamed ahead with a White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, most of whose proposals were later enshrined in the 2011 Education Bill. University-based teacher training was to be scaled back in favour of practical experience in the classroom via a new network of Teaching Schools, some to be located in the private sector. All new schools would now be either academies or free schools, and, with the Kirklees example in mind perhaps, central government gave itself the right to purchase school land from local authorities to hand straight over to the new ventures. Schools that were not meeting the new ‘floor target’ of 35 per cent GCSEs including English, mathematics and a science (but not to include vocational qualifications like BTEC, which many thought were artificially inflating school results) could be forced to convert to academy status. Schools that wished to convert were now required only to consult when they deemed it ‘appropriate’, and this consultation could be delayed until after an academy order has been made, rendering it virtually meaningless. Free schools could be set up in a number of locations including empty shops, office space or even ice rinks. Local admissions forums, important area-based committees created to scrutinise the fairness of school admissions, were to be abolished—just as a raft of new schools, with enhanced powers over their own admissions, were to be created. The School Adjudicator could no longer make changes to a school’s admission policy in response to a complaint or a referral. These changes may have precipitated the decision of the existing School Adjudicator, Ian Craig, to announce that he would stand down in October 2011, six months before his contract expired.
Meanwhile a fresh row was brewing over the introduction of a new measurement of school quality, the English Baccalaureate, known as the E-Bacc. In order to qualify, pupils had to have a good GCSE in maths, English, two sciences, a humanities subject (but this did not include a GCSE in Humanities), and an ancient or modern foreign language. Many heads were furious to discover that their schools were to be judged retrospectively on the new measure—that is, on GCSEs taken in the summer of 2010. Many were now faced with unpalatable decisions concerning whether to switch pupils halfway through existing GCSE courses to make sure their school performed well in future league tables, or to ignore what many saw as Gove’s arbitrary rulings over what subjects now counted, and stay at the bottom of the pile. Many deplored the absence of subjects like music, art and religious education from the E-Bacc.
A new partiality seemed to have crept into government policy-making. Critics questioned the high number of academy heads and leaders represented on a major review of teaching and learning, announced in March 2011—particularly
