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The Venerable Gove

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    #26
    The Venerable Gove

    ha! ha! Gove goes from hero to zero with his core audience in one day:

    http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2010/07/what-difference-day-makes.html

    According to one of the comments there, Gove managed to stop a project to merge two small schools into a new school on another site. Far from being some act of Labour profligacy, huge amounts of money will be saved from an economy of scale, selling the old land etc.

    Comment


      #27
      The Venerable Gove

      It is always wonderful to watch a long-time opposition party take power. You get to watch them gradually realise that this governing business is much trickier than they'd previously imagined. Most assume, I think, that they can waltz in with a few very broad ideas, explain them to their public servants, tell them to get on with it and voila - problem solved. Reality, in all its messiness, comes as a terrible shock.

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        #28
        The Venerable Gove

        Particularly when the minister wasn't even in a political party 8 years ago.

        Warning- this is fucking nauseating:

        http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/oct/15/davidcameron.politicalcolumnists

        Had Teresa May started like Gove we'd have heard whisperings about overpromoted women.

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          #29
          The Venerable Gove

          Cable asks Lord Browne to include a look at a graduate tax in his review of fees, saying:

          At the moment what happens is you've inherited a probably a £3,000-a-year tuition fee as it is called. And this is paid back at 9p in the pound and you have paid it off. The system has no relations to your earnings later in life. So a teacher or a youth worker pays the same amount as a surgeon or a top commercial lawyer. There is I think a widespread sense that this isn't fair.
          The simpler way to deal with this, of course, is to charge variable fees - less for youth workers, more for law and medical students. I assume Browne will tell him this.

          Comment


            #30
            The Venerable Gove

            HIGHER TAXES FOR HIGHER EARNERS- THE POLITICS OF ENVY!

            I've already seen this counter-argument elsewhere...

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              #31
              The Venerable Gove

              So the rest of Europe is dragged kicking and screaming from 4 year to 3 year degrees through the Bologna process, and now the UK proposes to go to 2 year degrees.

              Why not just give degrees away in boxes of cereal and close universities altogether. They like health and schools are just a burden on the taxpayer

              Comment


                #32
                The Venerable Gove

                I'm confused by that 2-year thing. Didn't Labour try it out a few years ago under the name "Foundation Degree"? And wasn't it a resounding failure because everyone thought that if they chose a 2-year degree they'd be seen as second-class in the labour market compared to people with 3-year degrees?

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                  #33
                  The Venerable Gove

                  Why not have 2 lots of students doing 3 year courses at the same time? If somewhere has good facilities, accommodation etc, why not put twice as many students through there as now? I know terms usually last more than 6 months combined, but they could be shortened without devaluing the degree too much. Oxbridge does OK with 3 * 8 weeks.

                  Wouldn't this deliver massive economies?

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                    #34
                    The Venerable Gove

                    Pretty minor ones, I would have thought unless you could persuade professors to teach the second lot of students at a reduced rate.

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                      #35
                      The Venerable Gove

                      Possibly- they would be recycling a lot of teaching material, after all. But not necessarily.

                      I'm expecting substantially more teachers to be employed on that site.

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                        #36
                        The Venerable Gove

                        But universities make tons of money (relatively speaking) renting out their facilities and accomodation for conferences during the holidays.

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                          #37
                          The Venerable Gove

                          I'd be surprised if most of them made that much out of it. If Keele, say, a big draw? Wouldn't Keele be better getting more people through its courses, which I think are regarded as excellent?

                          Aren't they only using bedrooms and conference rooms anyway? Hardly the most significant parts of a university.

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                            #38
                            The Venerable Gove

                            No, they use classrooms, residences, offices, tons. I'm writing from a room at UEA where I'm currently staying, teaching in one of the classrooms here in the day, and using various offices for various class related preparation stuff. In August I'll do exactly the same at Homerton in Cambridge.

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                              #39
                              The Venerable Gove

                              Er....

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                                #40
                                The Venerable Gove

                                Ginger Yellow wrote:
                                But universities make tons of money (relatively speaking) renting out their facilities and accomodation for conferences during the holidays.
                                More importantly Universities make tons of money by their academic staff doing research in the times they are not teaching. It is important that Universities undertake research as 'factories' for the creation of knowledge and new ideas. If they don't, it won't really happen elsewhere and the teaching will eventually be out of date.

                                In economic terms the research income cross-subsidises the teaching. Undergraduate teaching to UK/EU students loses money and any economy of scale be doubling the size of cohorts is unlikely to match this.

                                There is also the issue of the pressure on facilities. Students still need places to live, books in libraries, IT support, access to research papers, etc. Also course preparation, new course development, marking of exams, interviewing of prospective students has to be fitted in as well.

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                                  #41
                                  The Venerable Gove

                                  I admit I was talking rubbish. My er to ad hoc was a sincere one, not a Private Eye style one.

                                  How far does that work with arts stuff though? Take my subject of classics. Who comes in during the holidays and wants to hire experts in that?

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                                    #42
                                    The Venerable Gove

                                    Former journalist not very arsed about fact-checking

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                                      #43
                                      The Venerable Gove

                                      Cull that quango now!

                                      I read today (Andreas Whittam Smith) that the coalition, while giving a reasonable amount of parliamentary time to the education bill, basically said that they would accept amendments from the Lords and not the Commons.

                                      The rightwing defenders of Parliament have been remarkably quiet about this.

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                                        #44
                                        The Venerable Gove

                                        I should add that while the time discussing the bill was OK, the time taken in terms of dates isn't. As Whittam Smith says, ministers love the flourish of making announcements, but not the passage of the bill, where all sorts outside parliament get to criticise it. No wonder they love to cut that time down.

                                        Still, the bloke from The Times (who wasn't even in a political party 8 years ago) knows it all anyway.

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                                          #45
                                          The Venerable Gove

                                          Gove's also been extraordinarily liberal, as it were, in his interpretation of the phrase "expressing an interest". Basically, if a school head clicks on a website that seems to be registered pretty much as a supportive application for academy status.

                                          I still reckon, in an unusual bout of optimism, that he won't be in the Cabinet by the time of the next election

                                          Comment


                                            #46
                                            The Venerable Gove

                                            Yeah. I expressed an interest in a phone card outside Bethnal Green Station once.

                                            However bad academies might be for schools overall, you can see why a school head would think that they needed to have a look at it so they didn't get left behind. I suppose if one governor is interested they have to have a look. I wonder if some schools who are sympathetic are hanging on for a further sweetner?

                                            Did you see the bit in your link about Gove bullshitting on cycle racks in the House of Commons?

                                            Interesting bit on the EU procurement rules in the link too. It's a difficult subject.

                                            Comment


                                              #47
                                              The Venerable Gove

                                              This might be significant- not in terms of facts or anything but because of who's said it. The Telegraph is a big fan of the free schools stuff, and employs Toby Young to write about it all the time. They might be thinking they'd be better off with another minister.

                                              http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7932056/Leaked-advice-deals-Michael-Gove-new-blow-in-schools-row.html

                                              The advice to Mr Gove came from James Goudie QC, one of the country's leading experts in administrative and public law, who was called in by the Department for Education (DfE).

                                              Mr Goudie's advice, sent on 22 July, reassures Mr Gove that private building firms would have little chance of a successful challenge for compensation – unless local authorities have given promises to contractors.

                                              However, he adds that councils could have a "fairly strong case" for recovering any costs incurred if they based their plans on assurances of funding from either the current or previous education secretaries.
                                              Last month The Sunday Telegraph revealed that Mr Gove had ignored the advice of his own officials in going ahead with the announcement of the scrapping of the £55 billion Building Schools for the Future (BSF) initiative before widespread consultation.

                                              The DfE said the newspaper's story was "wrong" – only for it to be confirmed in evidence to the Commons all-party education select committee.

                                              Comment


                                                #48
                                                The Venerable Gove

                                                I'm puzzled by Balls' statement:

                                                Ed Balls, the shadow education secretary, said: "Now the evidence is clear just what a huge and wasteful gamble Michael Gove has taken with taxpayers' money. He has risked the worst of all worlds – a large compensation bill but no new school buildings to show for it."
                                                This seems like an odd line of argument. If the councils win compensation via the courts, they couldn't just blow it all on cocaine and hookers, could they? They'd be more or less obliged to spend it on schools, right?

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                                                  #49
                                                  The Venerable Gove

                                                  That's a good point. There would be the legal costs of course, depending on how many Gove chose to fight.

                                                  Balls would be better to talk about the confusion this is causing and how schools can't plan properly.

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                                                    #50
                                                    The Venerable Gove

                                                    I see Gove is now snatching playgrounds.

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