Labour's Hunt criticises Gove for 'crazed, burned-out investment banker model of teaching' where job seen as short-term career
Tristram Hunt has described the education secretary, Michael Gove, as a zealot and said that a string of recent high-profile failures – including the controversy over the Al-Madinah free school in Derby – meant that the public had turned against the coalition government's changes to the education system.
In an interview with the Guardian, Hunt, who took over as shadow education secretary a month ago, said a Labour government would apply tougher scrutiny to the management of academy schools and use sanctions against academy chains whose performance was stagnating.
"The Michael Gove model, of a competitive, atomistic school landscape where every school is an island, of a creative destruction approach to the school system, of a free market vision, has clearly come to an end," Hunt said.
A Labour administration would replace the competing ranks of free schools, academies and local authority schools with networks of collaboration at local and regional level, and create a middle layer of oversight between schools and central government.
"In the government's vision of centralised control from Whitehall, you have David Laws and Michael Gove answerable for thousands of schools and nothing in between," Hunt said.
"When you don't have those kinds of tiers, you end up with the kind of chaos you saw at Al-Madinah, at the Kings Science Academy in Bradford, and we're getting worried about what we are hearing about Barnfield."
Al-Madinah is a free school in Derby recently given a damning judgment by Ofsted inspectors, amid concerns about the school's management and teaching, while the Kings Science academy is a free school in Bradford investigated for financial irregularities.
This week Barnfield College academy near Luton was warned by the Department for Education over "unacceptably low standards of performance", after it was revealed that just 9% of pupils passed the government's threshold of five good grades at GCSE, including English and maths.
The college and its associated federation of schools was placed under investigation last month by the DfE and the Skills Funding Agency.
Of his opposite number, Hunt said: "Michael Gove does read into education policy the entirety of his own remarkable life story.
"But not all kids are as academically gifted as the secretary of state, so have we got pathways in place for them?
"And not all kids are academically minded. His total lack of interest in vocational pathways is absolutely startling."
I think he's a very ideological figure. The problem with ideologists is that there's no doubt. And most educators and most in the teaching profession know that doubt is important.
"If you are a zealot then you have no doubt. And what we've had is a zealot's approach to school reform, revolutionary structural reform. And we're all seeing it reaching the end of its natural or unnatural life."
Hunt said that academy chains – groups of academy schools controlled and administered by a single corporate body – should be open to inspection by Ofsted, in the same way that local authority education departments are.
"Let me be clear, this is not an attack on academy chains. I know the best chiefs of academy chains are with me on this one. Chains that take on the responsibility for growing numbers of schools must be up to the job and must be accountable.
"But we know that Michael Gove doesn't agree. He has signed off on the expansion of the Academies Enterprise Trust from four academy schools to more than 70 since May 2010. And it's no surprise that AET is struggling and the education provided by some of these academies is not what it should be."
The Commons education committee recently published a report calling for academy chains to be inspected along the same lines as local authorities, while Ofsted's chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has stated: "We should inspect academy chains as well, if we identify underperformance."
But the education minister, Lord Nash, who founded the chain Future Academies, told the education committee that inspections would not "give us any information we do not have materially at the moment".
As part of its schools strategy, Hunt said, Labour was exploring the development of "a middle tier, something that exists between the chair of the board of governors of a school and the secretary of state" which would involve parents and local authorities.
What that middle tier would look like will depend on the review being drawn up by former education secretary David Blunkett to inform Labour policy.
Hunt expects local authorities will still have a role to play in shaping and administering education in their areas. But he cautions: "We're not going back to 1998. We need a tier that could be broader than a local authority that creates the right answers. And that will be in our manifesto for 2015.
"We haven't got the answer yet but we know the question."
Hunt says he is convinced from data – from the OECD and others – that it is teaching quality that is vital to improve schools.
"Let's try to move away from what we've had for the last three years. We've had a government over-obsessed about structural reforms, who thinks the job is done once you've flipped a school to a free school or an academy and you walk away, and has tinkered endlessly with the curriculum," he said.
He opposed a "crazed, burned-out investment banker model of teaching", in which teaching was a short-term career, because of how it would harm successful schools. "Do parents want a high frequency churn of young teachers in their school? I think they want a mix of ages – the energy of the young teachers and the wisdom of the older ones – and the different insights that brings."
Teaching qualifications mattered too, in part as a safeguard. "If you do not have qualifications, you can end up with the situation that you see in Al-Madinah and the Kings Science Academy, where friends and family can be employed as teachers," Hunt warned.
Referring to a magazine cover that depicted Gove as a revolutionary, Hunt – a former history don – said: "Most parents don't want a Leninist revolutionary in charge of their kids' schools, they want someone concerned with improving standards and raising attainment." Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.
Tristram Hunt has described the education secretary, Michael Gove, as a zealot and said that a string of recent high-profile failures – including the controversy over the Al-Madinah free school in Derby – meant that the public had turned against the coalition government's changes to the education system.
In an interview with the Guardian, Hunt, who took over as shadow education secretary a month ago, said a Labour government would apply tougher scrutiny to the management of academy schools and use sanctions against academy chains whose performance was stagnating.
"The Michael Gove model, of a competitive, atomistic school landscape where every school is an island, of a creative destruction approach to the school system, of a free market vision, has clearly come to an end," Hunt said.
A Labour administration would replace the competing ranks of free schools, academies and local authority schools with networks of collaboration at local and regional level, and create a middle layer of oversight between schools and central government.
"In the government's vision of centralised control from Whitehall, you have David Laws and Michael Gove answerable for thousands of schools and nothing in between," Hunt said.
"When you don't have those kinds of tiers, you end up with the kind of chaos you saw at Al-Madinah, at the Kings Science Academy in Bradford, and we're getting worried about what we are hearing about Barnfield."
Al-Madinah is a free school in Derby recently given a damning judgment by Ofsted inspectors, amid concerns about the school's management and teaching, while the Kings Science academy is a free school in Bradford investigated for financial irregularities.
This week Barnfield College academy near Luton was warned by the Department for Education over "unacceptably low standards of performance", after it was revealed that just 9% of pupils passed the government's threshold of five good grades at GCSE, including English and maths.
The college and its associated federation of schools was placed under investigation last month by the DfE and the Skills Funding Agency.
Of his opposite number, Hunt said: "Michael Gove does read into education policy the entirety of his own remarkable life story.
"But not all kids are as academically gifted as the secretary of state, so have we got pathways in place for them?
"And not all kids are academically minded. His total lack of interest in vocational pathways is absolutely startling."
I think he's a very ideological figure. The problem with ideologists is that there's no doubt. And most educators and most in the teaching profession know that doubt is important.
"If you are a zealot then you have no doubt. And what we've had is a zealot's approach to school reform, revolutionary structural reform. And we're all seeing it reaching the end of its natural or unnatural life."
Hunt said that academy chains – groups of academy schools controlled and administered by a single corporate body – should be open to inspection by Ofsted, in the same way that local authority education departments are.
"Let me be clear, this is not an attack on academy chains. I know the best chiefs of academy chains are with me on this one. Chains that take on the responsibility for growing numbers of schools must be up to the job and must be accountable.
"But we know that Michael Gove doesn't agree. He has signed off on the expansion of the Academies Enterprise Trust from four academy schools to more than 70 since May 2010. And it's no surprise that AET is struggling and the education provided by some of these academies is not what it should be."
The Commons education committee recently published a report calling for academy chains to be inspected along the same lines as local authorities, while Ofsted's chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw has stated: "We should inspect academy chains as well, if we identify underperformance."
But the education minister, Lord Nash, who founded the chain Future Academies, told the education committee that inspections would not "give us any information we do not have materially at the moment".
As part of its schools strategy, Hunt said, Labour was exploring the development of "a middle tier, something that exists between the chair of the board of governors of a school and the secretary of state" which would involve parents and local authorities.
What that middle tier would look like will depend on the review being drawn up by former education secretary David Blunkett to inform Labour policy.
Hunt expects local authorities will still have a role to play in shaping and administering education in their areas. But he cautions: "We're not going back to 1998. We need a tier that could be broader than a local authority that creates the right answers. And that will be in our manifesto for 2015.
"We haven't got the answer yet but we know the question."
Hunt says he is convinced from data – from the OECD and others – that it is teaching quality that is vital to improve schools.
"Let's try to move away from what we've had for the last three years. We've had a government over-obsessed about structural reforms, who thinks the job is done once you've flipped a school to a free school or an academy and you walk away, and has tinkered endlessly with the curriculum," he said.
He opposed a "crazed, burned-out investment banker model of teaching", in which teaching was a short-term career, because of how it would harm successful schools. "Do parents want a high frequency churn of young teachers in their school? I think they want a mix of ages – the energy of the young teachers and the wisdom of the older ones – and the different insights that brings."
Teaching qualifications mattered too, in part as a safeguard. "If you do not have qualifications, you can end up with the situation that you see in Al-Madinah and the Kings Science Academy, where friends and family can be employed as teachers," Hunt warned.
Referring to a magazine cover that depicted Gove as a revolutionary, Hunt – a former history don – said: "Most parents don't want a Leninist revolutionary in charge of their kids' schools, they want someone concerned with improving standards and raising attainment." Reported by guardian.co.uk 2 days ago.