This morning at our Schools Revolution conference, Michael Gove came under sustained attack from academies architect Lord Adonis and Neil O’Brien from Policy Exchange, who pointed to a slowing-down in the number of primary sponsored academies being set up. O’Brien pointed out that the majority – around 80% – of academies set up under Gove are actually failing schools converting to academy status rather than new schools with a sponsor. Adonis told the audience that Gove’s success on academies was illusory’ because of the decline in the number of sponsored academies.
But I hear that Gove is going to directly address these criticisms in his speech this afternoon. I understand that the Education Secretary is going to announce that there are 220 academies either already open or that will open in the next few months as academies, and that he aims to do more in 2012/13. Labour has argued that reaching the 200 figure for this group of schools is not possible and that any claims to have done so are spin. Gove is speaking at 2.15, so we’ll bring you live updates from the speech on the Coffee House Twitter feed.
UPDATE: I’ve just come from Gove’s speech, which he delivered before charging over to the House of Commons for the Opposition Day debate on O-levels. He announced that the Government wanted to accelerate the academies process, ensuring that 200 of the most under-performing primary schools will become academies. A fund will also launch today which the minister said was worth ‘up to £10m’, and will help schools to become academies. That’s a massive speeding up of the process.
But that wasn’t the only thing of interest that Gove said. At the end of the speech, he took a few questions from the audience, and managed to claim that Nick Clegg supported him in his plans to reform GCSEs. He said: ‘The Deputy Prime Minister supports me… The Deputy Prime Minister wants to end a two-tier system.’
He was asked whether this meant that there was any split at all between the Tories and Liberal Democrats on this issue, and denied there was, adding: ‘As a Liberal Democrat colleague said to me, we did not spend 70 years in the wilderness only to come into power to defend the status quo.”
Note, though, that Gove only referred to Clegg’s desire to end a two-tier system, rather than any specific desire to replace the current examinations system with modern equivalents of O-levels and GCSEs.
Not content with taking aim at secondary school exams, Gove also took on A-levels. He pointed out that the current system of AS and A2 levels forces teenagers to spend two successive summers taking exams. Instead, he suggested that A2 exams could be taken earlier in the year, which would also make it easier for universities to select applicants on the basis of real, rather than predicted, grades. ‘I think there’s a case, but we have to proceed with care,’ he said.
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