This charming man: an audience with the Gover

24 September 2008

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Fraser Nelson meets the shadow schools secretary and finds him bracingly radical and disarmingly polite: a recipe for success in government

There are two reliable tricks which can fill the room at any Tory speaking event: offer free beer, or put Michael Gove on the panel. His fusion of almost comic politeness and intellectual ruthlessness have given him quite a following, whether he’s defending neoconservatism or David Cameron. In three short years he has been propelled to the Tory front bench, tasked with devising a supply-side revolution in education which would be the flagship reform for the next Tory government.

When we meet he is full of tales about Sweden, where he had just been to visit schools that use the system he hopes to bring to England. His spectacles, which have grown progressively more fashionable as he edged from journalism to public life, have now vanished altogether. Yet this is the same Gove: hand-waving, willing to talk on any subject, but itching to get across what ‘Swedish schools’ — a rather abstract concept for most parents — will mean for England.

It is, in effect, an offer of, say, £6,000 a pupil, intended to encourage new schools to set up. In Sweden such new schools educate a tenth of pupils. And in England, he says, what it will mean is that ‘in your neighbourhood, there will be a new school going out of its way to persuade you to send your children there. It will market itself on being able to generate better results, and it won’t cost you an extra penny.’ When the new schools compete with existing state schools, they will — in theory — galvanise the whole system.

‘From having a system where it is basically take-it-or-leave-it, we’ll have a system with new schools run by people whose principal aim is to get the best possible educational results for your children, whose future depends on that.’ There is not much wriggle room in this target, all the more striking because secretary of state Gove could only encourage, never direct, new independent schools to set up. Yet he says that in the first few weeks of a Tory government, there will be no doubt about its seriousness of intent.

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Tory Warren

September 25th, 2008 10:58am Report this comment

The Tory party needs to be very careful of how it uses Gove. He is the sort of person who comes across as smug and self righteous (without meaning it I suspect) and can arouse an irrational dislike in people both inside and outside the party. The nuts magazine comments are a prime example.

David Short

September 25th, 2008 1:55pm Report this comment

I can't understand The Spectator bootlicking the currency Conservative party, which seems to have none of the principles or beliefs of traditional Conservatives.

'Audience' indeed!

wrinkled weasel

September 26th, 2008 12:17am Report this comment

Yes, charming. And for someone who looks like a twelve year-old spelling bee competition winner he has a stunningly beautiful wife.

Ulster Ex-Grammar School

September 26th, 2008 1:49pm Report this comment

Nice idea to encourage new schools to be set up - just as long as they're not grammar schools, of course. You can have any type of new school you like, according to Mr Gove, so long as it doesn't select by academic ability.

If Michael had grown up in Northern Ireland, his parents would not have had to fork out a fortune on a private school, because there would have been plenty of grammar schools. Here you have an example of a state school system within the UK with widespread public support - NI has virtually no private schooling.

Yet, for those in England who cannot go private, the Tories offer only revamped comprehensive schools to which many of them would never send their own children.

Sara Waterson

September 29th, 2008 11:04pm Report this comment

Grammar Schools are the only answer: not only do they properly educate, but they ensure that the most intelligent don't remain in little ghettos of their own social class, or get bullied out of succeeding at school

Duncan

September 30th, 2008 9:06pm Report this comment

It's all very well the Conservatives adopting Swedish education policies, but of course the Swedes pay upto 60% of their income in taxes and social security payments so the state can afford dole out money on elaborate education policies. Here in the United Kingdom we don't have such high rates of tax so how are the Conservatives going to pay for these Swedish education schemes they say that they are going to adopt?

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