Michael Gove vs the Blob

16 January 2010

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Dennis Sewell says that the political cage fight between the Tories and the educational establishment will be the most thrilling contest of Cameron’s first hundred days

The Russell Group, representing Britain’s top 20 universities, warned this week that Gordon Brown’s cuts would bring to its knees within six months a higher education system that has taken 800 years to create. The destruction of our schools system has been a slower, more drawn-out process. There is, fortunately, one last chance to save it. Of all the dramatic political battles that will begin only once the general election has been safely won, the most thrilling — and the one that more deserves to top the bill during David Cameron’s first hundred days — will be the cage fight between Michael Gove and the Blob. At stake will be our children’s and grandchildren’s futures and the Conservative party’s credibility as an agent of genuine social transformation.

In the eponymous 1958 film, The Blob was a protean jelly-like alien that terrorised a small Pennsylvanian town. Indescribable, indestructible and seemingly unstoppable, it consumed everything in its path as it grew and grew. Until, that is, the overblown amoeba got its comeuppance at the hands of Steve McQueen. The Blob entered the political lexicon in the mid-1980s, adopted by William Bennett, education secretary in the Reagan administration, as a term to describe the amorphous coalition of a bloated education bureaucracy, teacher unions and education research establishment that Bennett argued always obstructs or stifles school reform. After his resignation from Ofsted a decade ago, Chris Woodhead began to warn that British education was menaced by a Blob of its own, every bit as slimy, ruthless and voracious as the American original.

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DNA2012

January 17th, 2010 10:14pm Report this comment

So simple. Direct school funding for all state schools i.e.

All funds to the heads of each school who would then ‘purchase’ services i.e. training, use of playing fields, swimming baths, consultancy, resources at a competitive price from any ‘approved’ provider which could include councils through a ‘transparent’ tendering system with ‘set prices’ similar to NHS GP’s purchasing treatment for their patients from the private sector. Whereupon the ‘quality of service’ will be the key criterion of retaining the suppliers services for the following academic year.

Charlie R

January 18th, 2010 9:53pm Report this comment

It is not 'The Blob' - it has far more structure than that. It is 'The Matrix'. Nice to read someone who has taken the Red Pill...

Minnie Ovens

January 26th, 2010 1:08pm Report this comment

Good luck, Mr Gove, many of our problems in recent years are bcause the Blob has dumbed down students ability to analyse and think for themselves.
I remember in Los Angeles the LAUSD (united schools district) for years insisted that to maintain the best education for all there had to be an expensive and extensive bi-lingual programme in all schools.
This went on for years to allow Spanish speakers to become fluent in English.
Then Mayor Rearden decided it wasn't necessary and was too expensive. A terrible fight lasting over a year broke out but Rearden won in the end.
Guess what! After the first term all students were fluent in english.
Two points:
When children want to learn their developing minds allow for this easily.
The Blob is desperate to maintain their hold because developing minds are easy to influence to their philosophies and look what has transpired!
Mr Gove would do well to talk to Mr Rearden if only as a courtesy.