Rebutting #govevreality — a video of untruths and lazy thinking

The blob strikes again. A video called Gove vs Reality is doing the rounds, taking pot shots at Michael Gove’s education policies, or ‘challenging his assumptions and the evidence he advances to support his approach’ as the producers put it. It’s had nearly 50,000 views so far, but is there any truth in it?

With absurdly dramatic music, handpicked headlines and sound bites from the likes of Tom Watson, one might think that Michael Gove has been a complete disaster. Well, not surprisingly, there are a few untruths in the video:

1. Gove has taken too many ‘urgency pills’ — shock, a minister who wants to get something done! As Matthew d’Ancona says in his excellent book on the coalition, the government is operating on the basis ‘we may only be here for five years, so let’s behave as if that’s all the time we’ve got’. Instead of taking the cautious approach (later bemoaned by Tony Blair) that Labour fell into, Gove and this government are getting on with it.
2. Gove is imposing academies – not true: academies are only imposed on consistently failing schools, and the fact that there are now over 2,300 academies shows that there is an appetite for freedom from local authority control. Taxpayers support more autonomy over teachers’ pay, even if the teaching unions don’t.
3. Academies are not doing better than non-academies – Look at the results of the ARK Academies to see how well they can do.
4. More free schools – which are assumed to be a bad thing. Fraser explained last year how Sweden demonstrates that free schools and profit making schools improve results for everyone. Read that for an explanation of why more competition is a good thing.
5. Teaching morale and working conditions are down – Research from Bristol University published last year outlines how pupils are suffering because of the union-enforced national pay rate wage. The teaching unions (one of Gove’s main targets) promote complacency in our schools, and don’t seem to trust head teachers to reward their good teachers.
6. Profit-driven schools are coming – Policy Exchange’s paper on Social Enterprise Schools offers a fully transparent model that would help to spread the benefits of the Gove reforms to the most deprived children. It’s unlikely to happen in this Parliament because the Lib Dems have an aversion to the word ‘profit’; but, writing off the idea because it includes the word ‘profit’ is lazy.
7. Gove is the real enemy of promise — by adding more rigour to the classroom? By refusing to back down in the wake of self-indulgent strikes? By restoring confidence in our schools with a whole new series of qualifications? By allowing schools to get rid bad teachers?

Where did this video full of sweeping statements come from? According to the Gove vs Reality website, the video was produced by ABA Education Consultancy Ltd, a firm was incorporated in 2011 with an investment capital of £100 according to Companies’ House. Charles Andrew Bethell is named in the incorporation papers as the chairman, who appears to be the same man behind Andrew Bethell Associates.

This firm was behind the state-funded Teachers TV. Since the station was whacked in 2011 (the same year the consultancy firm was founded), Bethell and Co. have been advising Queen Rania of Jordan, Chile and Thailand on education policy. I’ve asked the firm whether the video was produced by themselves or for a client. So far, no response.