Michael Gove speaking at launch of Conservative Education manifesto
The change from Ed Balls to Michael Gove into the rebranded Department for Education is not going to be the only speedy change in the coming months in the worlds of education, and design. It is likely to be the most radical period of change that these policy areas has seen for almost a decade. We have known for some time and shared on this blog that big changes were afoot; it maybe the pace that surprises some.
The much vaunted free schools programme and the pupil premium will be high profile items on the ‘to do’ list. Free schools will be well funded and pump primed for success. The pupil premium will take longer to sort out and also all schools will be given much greater freedom in the curriculum than the pre election rhetoric led us to believe. Greater freedoms will also follow with more ‘academy like’ benefits given to all schools – to remove practices imposed by what many perceive was a top down, command and control government. And a new education bill is likely to appear within weeks in time for the Queens Speech with a number of shake ups to the current education landscape.
We know that there are likely to big cuts in public services across the board with guesses of between 20-30% depending on the outcome of the budget and next spending review. We are given a further insight from yesterday’s article in the Independent Education Supplement from Anna Fazackerley – the head of education at the think tank Policy Exchange – who says that, “one part of the schools budget that is ripe for cutting is capital”. We have also heard a day later that all BSF programmes that haven’t reached preferred bidder stage may be frozen, pending a review in the upcoming budget.
So the pace of change is fast and the next 6 weeks are a crucial time for everyone working in the education, design and built environment sector.
Related posts:
Free Schools: Before we get too carried away on the wave of post-election euphoria where is the evidence that free schools will address the problems of the ‘long tail’ of underachievement in the UK? Where is the evidence that parents will take an active part in setting up and running schools when in many areas teachers struggle to engage them with their child’s education and there is already a dearth of applicants for governors? Where is the evidence that they will be able to manage the premises effectively when one of the original reasons for BSF was to deal with the neglect caused by is the mismanagement of devolved budgets? By all means let’s look at systems in other countries but where is the evidence that Sweden, a small and socially cohesive country that only just scrapes into the top ten in the PISA tables, provides the silver bullet?