The Venerable Gove

[Tubby Isaacs]

School building programme axed. Perhaps not much surprise:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jul/05/school-building-programme-budget-cuts

This is bad even by Tory standards:

A comprehensive review of all school capital projects will be launched, chaired by Sebastian James, group operations director of DSG international plc and a contemporary of David Cameron from Oxford University. The review team also includes Kevin Grace, director of property services at Tesco, Barry Quirk, chief executive of Lewisham, John Hood former Vice-Chancellor of University of Oxford and Sir John Egan, former Chief Executive of Jaguar and BAA.

Wealth of experience of education there.

What's the betting acadamies get a bit more flexibility than the rest?

Also, a complete pile of shit from Gove:

He said: "There are some councils which entered the process six years ago which have only just started building new schools. Another project starting this year is three years behind schedule.

"By contrast, Hong Kong international airport, which was built on a barren rock in the South China Sea and can process 50 million passenger movements every year, took just six years to build - from start to finish."

Because a project on one site is just the same as one on 700 hundred different sites. I'm inferring that 699 of them aren't 3 years behind.

[Max Payne]

The Venerable Gove

I can see Kevin Grace from Tesco now "That one's rubbish. Pull the plug and we'll take the site off your hands...."

Nice to see the CONservatives aren't letting the Thatcher haters down and are reverting to type nice and quick. Nice how? Nice because I emigrated to Australia last year. Clegg, a big part of this is your bad pal.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Venerable Gove

See, now here's what I don't get. Gove's ostensible rationale for this is incredibly weak. However, once you accept that the books have to balance at some point this decade (a point Labour agreed to - the difference in timing seemed to be about 18 months or so), then I would have thought capital budgets for schools would be way, way, way up there as prime candidates for expenditure reduction. For the following reasons:

1) They aren't taking anything *away* from anybody or laying off teachers. Politically, this seems a much more attractive way to trim education budgets than most of the alternatives.

2) If I understand the figures correctly, the Government has sunk an awful lot of money into school construction programs in the last five years or so. Even if you buy the "we still need to invest in the downturn" arugument (which has some force, I think), presumably new schools are as a result now a less urgent priority than, say, rail.

So why not stand on two feet and say simply that of the many shit options availble to the government, this one is slightly less bad than the others. Why the crap analogies about Hong Kong instead?

Does the academies proposal make any provision for capital spending at new schools, Tubbs? I thought it explicitly didn't, but I could be wrong.

[ad hoc]

The Venerable Gove

My brother, who has no connection with education (aside from once being a pupil himself and having a son who will become one too fairly soon), was until a few weeks ago set to be very heavily involved with (ie in charge of) the rebuilding programme in the county in which he lives. He's also somewhat more right wing than I (I'm pretty sure he won't have voted Tory, but he might have flirted with the Lib Dems). He was blown away by the quality of the thinking and work that had gone into the programme thus far - in his opinion it was one of the best run ideas that he'd ever seen, with fantastic architects working with educators to propose (and build) great schools which were very badly needed.

So fuck Gove, fuck the Tories and fuck everything they fucking do. Cunts.

[E10 Rifle]

The Venerable Gove

It's also worth pointing that even 10, 20 years ago the standard of buildings in which pupils were taught - even at 'well-regarded' comprehensives like the one I went to - was bloody awful. I mean putting-you-off-learning/too cold/too hot awful. It was a worthwhile programme, though I've got issues with the PFI-centred way much of it was done.

The background of the consultant they've got in to review the project, and Gove's ridiculous comparison with a Hong Kong airport (essentially, 'why can't the public sector be more like the private sector? Why can't schools be like airports? They're so similar') tell us all we need to know about the Tories' thinking on this and other issues.

So Tubbs and ad hoc have called it right. Fuck off Gove and fuck off Tories.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

Ad Hoc, is that noj or another brother? Say hello to Noj for me, whatever.

I too have picked up a fair bit of good buzz from the programme- the BBC has a nice slideshow here on the sort of thought that's put into new school buildings:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/10508393.stm

In retrospect, I think this is an area we didn't give New Labour credit for- subject to what E10 says about PFI. Francis Beckett neatly tied PFI in with the notion of selfish baby boomers- "we need schools for our kids- let's get them to pay for them as well!"

AG is right about Gove's justification being even weaker than it needed to be. I've wondered about bits like the Hong Kong crap in ministers' speeches. I'm hoping no civil servant has anything to do with it.

Anyway, what happened in the case of the school he cites is presumably that whoever runs the programme decided that there were other schools who were a greater priority. It doesn't mean workmen are sat on site in "dunno, mate" mode.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Venerable Gove

I'm curious, though, E10 and Tubbs: when you voted Labour, you voted for a manifesto that effectively was going to reduce overall spending in nominal dollars by 2% each year for four years (assuming inflation of 2%, that's a cumuative decline of about 13% in real dollars). Add in the fact that Labour also said it would ring-fence NHS spending, that means that cuts would be higher in all other sectors and you're probably looking at cuts in sectors like education of about 15-16% over four years. Which is probably less than the LibCons seem to be planning, but it's not exactly night and day as a difference.

How did you think this would pan out, exactly? How would Labour cuts in education have been different than these ones? What do you think they would have prioritized differently?

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

The vote for Labour didn't mean I endorsed all their manifesto. Though as you know, I am more receptive to cuts than E10. I would (vaguely speaking) have more tax rises than cuts in the balancing process. And I wouldn't have ringfenced the NHS and cut defence. But maybe I'm wandering off the subject.

What you say about this being a politically easy way to make cuts is true. I'd have been OK with some of this being delayed, perhaps. And there are other areas the Audit Commission flagged up that I'd look at first. We discussed the school surpluses in banks on here before- and Chris J (where he recently?) well explained why schools have them- but surely this could be spent now and some stable funding agreed for the future.

I don't know how much proper evaluation has been done of classroom assistants- one thing I read said it was very little. In this case, I'd happily not replace a few of them rather than cut building as a matter of course.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

How would it have panned out with a New Labour government re-elected? Possibly not that differently.

Belated answer to your question there.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The Venerable Gove

E10 would have been arguing strongly against Labour cuts too.

[E10 Rifle]

The Venerable Gove

He would, while arguing that Labour wouldn't have made cuts with quite the same unbending ideological zeal.

[DCI Harry Batt]

The Venerable Gove

He'd have something of a point about that, too.

[E10 Rifle]

The Venerable Gove

Though he'd be worried about turning into Kevin Keegan, with all this referring to himself in the third person.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

I don't quite understand the particular opprobrium that attaches to cuts- aside from the question of timing, which is very bad for these. Departments have to be able to plan over a period, and you shouldn't tear up the spending review or anything. But it seems to be considered worse to raise spending by a substantial amount and then cut it than to raise it by small amounts each year.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

E10 Braifull wrote:

Though he'd be worried about turning into Kevin Keegan, with all this referring to himself in the third person.

I'd be worried about turning into Ray Allan with my "Talking E10" ventriloquism act.

[Lucia Lanigan]

The Venerable Gove

I remember reading an article about the IMF steaming in to tell the electioneering Tories they'd send us all to hell in a handcart if they rushed into making these cuts. Brown's plan was to wait a year and do it properly. I've not heard anything about this since.

I currenly work in the building where Gove is supposed to spend his working days. I shared a lift with him for five floors - he's taller than you think, not at all the withered moon-calf you'd expect, which just goes to show how little we can trust these people - but I rarely carry weaponry. What should I do if this happens again?

[DCI Harry Batt]

The Venerable Gove

Punch him until he stops bleeding.

[Eggchaser]

The Venerable Gove

Looks like Gove's had to back down somewhat.

Education Secretary Michael Gove is to "apologise unreservedly" over errors in information released about scrapping England's school building programme.

A number of schools that thought their building plans had been saved have now been told they are being axed.

Steve Eling, deputy leader of Sandwell council, one of the affected areas, said the situation was "bizarre and disgraceful".

Mr Eling said hopes for new schools had been "stolen from under our noses".

Mr Gove is to write an apology to the Speaker of the House of Commons - and his department has issused a statement saying: "We apologise unreservedly for these errors or lack of clarity for parents, teachers and local communities."

(BBC)

If this had been the previous administration, the papers would have been all over it.

[Ginger Yellow]

The Venerable Gove

But it seems to be considered worse to raise spending by a substantial amount and then cut it than to raise it by small amounts each year.

Of course it is. Because the former approach involves hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, which is a pretty traumatic and deleterious experience. Not too mention the other problems associated with boom/bust cycles.

[Anton Gramscescu]

The Venerable Gove

Fair enough re: arguing against cuts personally. I'm just suggesting that when it comes to cutbacks in this area, the line dividing "cunts" from a "Responsible Labour government" would not appear to be all that obvious.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

Ginger Yellow wrote:

But it seems to be considered worse to raise spending by a substantial amount and then cut it than to raise it by small amounts each year.

Of course it is. Because the former approach involves hundreds of thousands of people losing their jobs, which is a pretty traumatic and deleterious experience. Not too mention the other problems associated with boom/bust cycles.

As opposed to having hundreds of thousands of people not employed at all during that time- though I wasn't referring to these very drastic cuts specifically, or meaning cutting overall expenditure. People losing jobs is only part of it- what about the service users? Surely it's better for as many of those to have access to it as possible, over whatever period?

[E10 Rifle]

The Venerable Gove

Gove's getting it in the neck now for having given out inaccurate information on what schools projects would be chopped and spared. He's not gonna last in this position is he? Six months tops

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

As he's not an experienced politician like, say, Kenneth Clarke, he'll make all sorts of muck-ups, but he's virtually unsackable becauase of his radical rightism.

This sounds like a muck-up that could happen to anyone though.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

A slideshow of schools in Bridgewater, from where the local Tory MP is talking about a march on Downing Street. Seeing this involves a "special school", it won't look good for the government. one "classroom" is a shipping container, and there's also a very steep ramp for wheelchair users (a mere 40% of pupils) to negotiate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/gallery/2010/jul/09/school-buildings-cuts-bridgwater-somerset#/?picture=364732701&index=0

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Venerable Gove

Great bit of Gove getting petulant in parliament on the news just now. Some "hear, hear" from his own side, but also a fair few complaining that having water fall through the roof on to disabled pupils isn't the best image to project.

Gove reckoned the old scheme was bureaucratic. Which would seem to argue he could have delivered big savings anyway.

In other news, graduate tax is reckoned to be on the agenda.