Below, and just in case any UK public sector worker needed further motivation to take strike action tomorrow (November 30th 2011), a ‘striking’ Michael Gove. A case of ‘do as I say, not as I do’?

The MP? Our own Education Secretary Michael Gove.

That is, former Times journalist Michael Gove.

That is, the husband of Sarah Vine a fellow Times journalist.

That is, the former Times Leader Writer, Comment Editor, News Editor, Saturday Editor and Assistant Editor Michael Gove.

While Gove wrote for the Times, one of his bête noires was the BBC and their supposed left-wing bias (you can look here at the Times’ website if you wish to contribute to Murdoch’s retirement, or here for free at The New Statesmen).

Seems Gove was happy to peddle the Murdoch-Tory line about that.

Does the former Assistant Times Editor then have anything to tell us about what went on during his time there? Or, were the Goves otherwise engaged?

And, as we have wondered in previous posts (EducationState passim), is Michael Gove a “fit and proper person” for Education Secretary?

Is it right that this man, a man who edited a newspaper for a corporation that it has been alleged hacked into the phones of thousands of celebrities, politicians, policemen and ordinary people including young murder and 9/11 victims, and the families of war dead, be responsible for the lives of the vast majority of young and vulnerable people in the UK?

We think not.

Last week, Ian Duncan Smith urged the recruitment of British workers, a few weeks before that Michael “The Governor” Gove decided to relax the rules regulating the employment of overseas-trained teachers.

So, in other words, the UK should employ British staff and then it shouldn’t.

Or, to put it another way, British companies should recruit British workers or maybe they shouldn’t.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with overseas-trained staff, of course, especially highly-qualified and experienced teachers.

Their recruitment can address subject shortages and is much more preferable than placing undertrained Teach First newbies in the neediest classrooms.

So what on earth is going on in Tory HQ when the arse says one thing and the elbow another? Signs of an internal rift perhaps?

CfBT Education Trust is another on-message charity. They claim to “provide education for public benefit worldwide.” But try telling this to the parents of children at one special school in Lincoln, UK.

In a local newspaper report,“I chose Queen’s Park School because it was the best for my child”, we read that despite CfBT (who have been put in control of Lincolnshire’s school improvement services) promising to the contrary, proposals are being discussed which will see the closure of one special school, Queen’s Park School, with other existing schools, St Francis and St Christopher’s, taking up the slack. This is happening despite Queen’s Park school gaining an “oustanding” rating from Ofsted inspectors.

It seems that CfBT is perhaps forgetting its own charitable objectives, as closing a special school seems miles away from the shaking of the collecting tin.

We are told in the article that parents were assured last year that a consultation into special schools was not about closing them. Indeed, at the time of the consultation in June last year, Paul Snook of CfBT Education Trust in Lincolnshire said: “This is not about closing schools or saving money.”

Mr Snook said yesterday, however, that the proposals were only at a discussion stage at this time but had the full support of the three heads and governing bodies who had worked together, with the support of the Tory-run county council, over the past 15 months.

To one parent, CfBT reneging on its promise beggars belief. Debbie Gutsell, 27, of Lincoln, has a nine-year-old son at the school. She said: “For the sake of a building, these children’s lives are being uprooted. And to think, we have an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted. My son would not be where he is today if it was not for that school. I looked at three special schools and I chose Queen’s Park because that was the best school and the best place for my child. This affects our children and we as parents made conscious choices about what was best for them.”

There is a long history of education businesses masquerading as charities in the UK, of course. Exclusive public schools like Eton and Wellington College still continue to benefit from this anomalous privilege.

But what is particularly revealing is that, as with Teach First, the Tories are pushing their policies through via the charity route. They are doing this to avoid accusations of privatisation. But privatisation remains the name of the game, only charities not businesses are the new method of choice.

And CfBT seem to be particularly keen to pick up market share. They have already been criticised for tempting primary heads into converting to academies – a Tory favourite – and in the charities commission bumph are looking to gain from the Free School extravaganza or as they put it “pursuing with care opportunities to expand CfBT’s portfolio of schools
including the development of our response to the Free Schools
opportunity.”

You can also read on the Lincolnshire Council website how CfBT have “overall responsibility for the governance, leadership, learning and workforce development in schools and settings.” Nothing particularly charitable about that, we think you’ll agree.

We can’t be the only people wondering how an organisation that offers corporate services like these is defined as a charity? We also wonder if privatisation via the charity backdoor is what Prime Minister Dave’s Big Society is really about?

He would know after all: he went to Eton.

We’re not the only ones dismayed by this news as so were senior civil servants apparently. While other notables such as Chris Woodhead, former head of Ofsted, thought it odd that a Nu Lab man and now head of McKinsey’s Global Education department should be so popular with the Tories.

There are also thousands and thousands of teachers and school managers who upon hearing the news that the Lord of the Target’s return was even considered will have their fingers permanently and tightly crossed that it isn’t and never comes true.

This news highlights again the very real and very close links between Tory education policy and one very controversial management consultancy firm: McKinsey & Co.

And also highlights the glaring and increasing disconnect between Gove and the rest of us.

What ever next?!

“IF AMERICANS harbored any doubts about their eroded global edge, the recent release of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development’s fourth international comparison of educational performance should rattle the nation from its “We’re No. 1’’ complacency. The latest Program for International Student Assessment study revealed that, although the United States made some modest gains, it is lagging behind many other developed nations in the ability of its 15-year-olds. The country isn’t flunking: like France, England, and Sweden, learning here has stagnated at below-average levels. That “gentleman’s C’’ should be a call to change course.

Finally, with the fourth PISA study again showing that the US education system is lagging those in many other countries, Americans should admit that there is much to learn from these systems. Relying on one’s past reputation is probably not the best approach for transforming an educational system to meet tomorrow’s needs and challenges. With America’s “can do’’ mentality and superior knowledge base in educational improvement, you could shift course before it’s too late.”

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

More than 79,000 children missed out on a place at their first-choice secondary school for this September, apparently.

However, Nick Gibb Minister for Schools seems to think that this means, ” there simply aren’t enough good schools.”

No it doesn’t, Nick.

The figures simply show how many kids missed out on their choices, not that there aren’t enough good schools.

It may be the case, for example, that an area only has good schools. Or that an area only has bad schools. Yet we wouldn’t know that from application trends, only that specific schools have been chosen over others. Parents may be making the best of a good lot, or the best of a bad lot.

We can’t find out how good a school is from the number of applications. We need to look at other measures. The Government loves league tables, so they’d recommend that measure. Others, like us, would expect schools to be chosen on location, word-of-mouth, former pupils, newness of building and facilities, transport links and so on.

But number of applications isn’t one of them.

Prosecutors allege that a billionaire hedge fund founder, Raj Rajaratnam, was given tips about McKinsey clients by Anil Kumar, a former senior McKinsey partner and Raj Gupta, former head of McKinsey. Another as yet unnamed McKinsey exec – believed to be David Palecek – is also thought to have been involved.

We have written previously about Teach First’s strong links to McKinsey – Brett Wigdortz is a former employee – but we mustn’t forget also that Sir Michael Barber, described recently by Michael Gove as ‘visionary educationalist’ and key source of wisdom in the Tory White Paper, is a partner at McKinsey and head of its Global Education Practice.

Of course a few bad apples don’t necessarily make a bad lot. And there is no suggestion that either Wigodrtz or Barber were at all involved in the alleged insider trading, but it does call into the question Tory judgement when it comes to choosing who it works with on the future of UK pupils and teacher training and recruitment.

In particular: Is engaging with such a company (where the true story of systematic fraud is only beginning to emerge) really such a good idea? And what does it tell us about the kind of people the Tories like to cosy up to especially given the Coulson phone-tapping affair?

The McKinsey insider-trading scandal, moreover, does further damage to the case for education privatisation. With money comes corruption. It is inevitable that competition and outsourcing will only increase the temptation for employees and businesses to break the law to line their own pockets at great cost to the taxpayer and education.

And by cost we don’t simply mean financial as there are numerous, tragic examples where privatisation and deregulation have been pinpointed as the reason for industrial accidents and loss of life.

Interestingly, the bad apples excuse was also used during the 2001 Enron scandal. If you recall, the execs at this US energy company had been able to hide company debts through some very creative accounting and a lack of proper oversight. When the debts were revealed, shareholders lost billions of dollars, the business folded and thousands of employees found themselves without a job. The long-term effects of the scandal was to see Enron executives sent to prison, the demise of its auditor and Big Five accountancy firm Arthur Andersen and the passing of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

You may be wondering why we are telling you this.

Enron’s management consultant: McKinsey.

(Enron’s disgraced former chief exec, Jeffrey Skilling, worked for McKinsey for eleven years. In fact the relationship between the two companies ran so deep that Enron is referred to as ‘the house that McKinsey built’)

The LA Times report that “The Los Angeles Board of Education voted Tuesday to begin the process of revoking the charter of six schools operated by the Crescendo organization.”

It appears that “Crescendo founder and executive director John Allen had, according to school district documents and officials, ordered principals and teachers to cheat by breaking the seal on the state tests and using the actual questions to prepare students for the test.”

Now of course simply because one bad apple acts this way doesn’t necessarily mean that the whole orchard is in need of replanting but it does draw attention to the pressure that business people are under to turn a profit when test-scores are tied to funding, and when there is such ideological and political investment in a glory project like Gove’s.

It is true that some UK schools, increasingly being modelled on the American experience, have been accused of corruption when it comes to enrolment and school places, plagiarised coursework, and the ejection of underperforming pupils before they lower school league table placings.

But by putting the school management reins in the hands of business people and coupling this with high-stakes testing, the pressure to cut a few more corners, or in the case of the LA school group to simply ignore the corners altogether, will surely only increase.

And this is especially worrying when, as Young admits on his blog, “From now on, the Secretary of State’s reputation will be tied to the performance of (our) school.”

Money corrupts. We know that politicians can’t resist. What about the new educationeers?

Aside from the fact that no-one is worth that much for a couple of days work, it also means that the head of the schools inspection body gets to say whether academies (that she is herself a champion of) are performing badly or not.

It also means that two of the most powerful people in UK education – Morgan and Michael Barber – work for companies – ARK and McKinsey – that would like nothing better than to run education themselves.

The Tory strategy sadly is all too clear: Privatisation.

They reason that the market knows best and our schools should be doing much better. Both of which are exaggerated if not completely false claims.

And the Education Secretary wants MORE powers?!