I will, if I may, Octavious, take extracts from your blog and respond to each in turn:
"I never put much store in newspaper headlines over the years saying discipline was a disaster (although it is very true that some schools had serious problems), but everything I've seen shows it has generally improved in the past ten years. How much of that is Gove and how much those who came before him is a matter of debate, but that it is better I don't think is."
Yes, there has been a pronounced and sustained improvement in pupil behaviour in schools and that has been going on for much longer than the ten years you propose. It is refreshing to read a right-wing commentator abandoning the 'myth of a golden age' (of youthful behaviour), a myth which has been with us since Ancient Greece. Given that such systemic improvements have medium- to long-term lead-in times, the bulk of the credit has to lie with Mr Gove's several predecessors rather than with him. The underlying causes of the improvement are, for various reasons, difficult to isolate. Unfortunately there is little or no research to support or rebut the hypotheses nor to identify their causes. Among the possibilities are:
[a] the outlawing of leaded petrol which had been evidenced as altering child behaviour;
[b] the abolition of casual and ritualised corporal punishment, which had reinforced and validated rather than eliminated violent pupil behaviour;
[c] a consequential change in teacher behaviour, including a reliance on more exciting curricular content and more developmental pedagogic techniques in place of physical force;
[d] the adoption of a National Curriculum ("NC"), which enabled teachers to shift their efforts from devising new content to the development of their skills and modes of delivery;
[e] the adoption of the associated NC tests, which enabled researchers to identify what pedagogic methods were apt to achieve success; and
[f] a major investment in education in the 2000s which was skilfully invested in providing support staff who could relieve teachers of some of the time-consuming non-pedagogic tasks, which had included, notably, pupil welfare issues and classroom display and reprographics, collecting in money and associated administrative tasks, relieving teachers to perform higher level work.
"As far as the quality of education is overseas, I have always felt we hold our own pretty well. This is no reason not to tackle the problems in our own system, such as the inability to do much to improve poor teachers"
That last phrase is simply ill-informed. School leaders and governors are amply provided with levers and powers to 'improve poor teachers', and they avail themselves of those punitive powers with regularity. What is objectionable is the inadequacy of the investment in the continuing professional development of teachers, the undue emphasis punishment and dismissal (rather than challenge and support) and the speed with which school leaders have recourse to dismissal rather than identification and remediation of the underlying cause(s) of any dip in performance.
"and reward the best",
There have, for many years now, been ample mechanisms for rewarding success. The trouble with the most recent proposals is that they are covert and apt to operate in a discriminatory manner.
"and the habit under the Labour government of watering down the quality of exams."
This, too, is un-evidenced. In fact, the system has built-in checks to ensure that the standard of work required to achieve a given grade remains the same from one year to the next. In what other area of employment or activity is it seen as evidence of collective failure to have achieved, as instructed, year on year, higher and higher levels of pupil outcomes, only to be told by one's political masters and by their friends, the press barons, that the evidence of their success was, in fact, a demonstration of their failure?
"I respect your view that Goves reforms were the wrong reforms, although generally disagree. I feel that free schools were a mistake, but aside from that he did pretty well."
'Free schools' were the central plank, which you acknowledge as a mistake. So, what is the basis of your assertion that he 'did pretty well'? In relation to what policy threads? Against what criteria? All I see is that he succeeded in alienating those on whom he necessarily had to rely to deliver his reforms, whatever they may have been.
"Regardless of that it is clear that he is a man that cares deeply about education and it would be hard to find a more dedicated minister to the future of Britain's children that him. Whether you like him or not, or agree with him or not, you can at least give him that."
Mr Gove introduced reforms which reduced the period of time for a teacher to redeem him/herself from perceived failure was as little as four weeks. In the education service which he was elected to lead, a man who "cares deeply about education and it would be hard to find a more dedicated teacher to the future of Britain's children that him" would, if he had completely alienated those in his charge and had relentlessly pursued mistaken policy initiatives, be dismissed within four weeks. Why was he given four years to wreak such havoc? I do not dislike the man. I despised his facile and dismissive description of his opponents expert in education as 'the blob'. Even more did I despise his implacable pursuit of dangerously mistaken policies.
Oh noes...the AIDS Researchers...
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