Clegg is spot on to pick Michael Gove up on his reckless ideological bias in education today.
Why do you think Gove went to some bastard US free school for his recent “fact-finding” mission?
Why not go to Finland? Or Japan? Or South Korea? You know, the countries that actually top international educational league polls – have been doing so for a long time.
Instead, he goes to a country with an even worse educational performance than us? Unless he’s finding out what not to do, then I fail to see the value.
His obsequious performance though, where he paid lip service to educational equality and made tepid jokes about communism, tells me otherwise.
Incidentally, a country’s academic performance and the status afforded its teachers are positively correlated. In Japan it takes almost ten years to qualify as a teacher. But let’s just let schools take on unqualified teachers as Gove so desperately wants. Yes, it’s those bloody teachers’ unions bringing down standards.
Is it any surprise when he was a former board member of the Atlantic Bridge, a right wing think tank heavily linked to the Koch brothers – American financiers who have a history of backing the Tea Party, the tobacco industry and climate change denialism – advocating closer partnership between Conservatives and the American right and which avoided tax by fraudulently claiming to be a charity?
If the Daily Mail ever wants to run a story about a man who loves his ideology more than Britain again, it would do well to start with Gove.
theabsoluteknave 