With Gove gone, a deafening silence seems to have descended upon the DfE. Nothing of any note has emanated from there since, other than a quickly abandoned proposal to enforce setting in schools. It’s hard to even remember the new Secretary of State’s name – it’s Nicky something, isn’t it? But it gives one an idea, on reflection, of the mad frenzy of policy change and radical upheaval that characterised the Govian regime.
Of course, this is the difference between a serious politician and ideologue, and a seat-warmer. Whatever his faults – hubris, educational ignorance, authoritarianism, short-termism, administrative incompetence, to name but a few – you can’t fault Gove for his ambition or doubt his desire to address key political and educational problems head on.
So it’s interesting to review his legacy and unpick the motivation behind the frenzy, especially when he was so close to Cameron and Osborne – the two real drivers of the government. The over-arching political desire was to lift the performance of our school system so that it could help drive the economy in a situation where the West is in relative, and perhaps absolute, decline against the tiger economies and monster education systems of the East.