The Blob is back with a vengeance – and the Tories aren’t ready for it

In what I supposed we should see as a sign of progress, the government has decided not to destroy its own school reforms, by revoking the first 18 clauses of the recently-published Schools Bill. I disclosed two weeks ago in the Daily Telegraph that many ex-ministers were up in arms at what they saw as the revenge of ‘The Blob’, the bureaucratic forces that have been against school reform.

The Schools Bill said that, rather than be self-governing, academy schools would lose control over the ‘nature and quality of education,’ ‘procedures and criteria for admission,’ ‘suitability of staff’ and ‘the spending of money’. In other words: pretty much everything. It would have been a stunning power grab by the civil service, representing the re-centralisation of schools and the cremation of the original Michael Gove agenda.

We’re now told that Nadhim Zahawi, the Education Secretary, was not really serious and intended this as a placeholder.