Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

This charming man: an audience with the Gover

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.’

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in