Commentators discuss Education Secretary Michael Gove's White Paper which aims to improve teachers' standards.
Nick Clegg and Michael Gove at Durand Academy Primary School
Sacked after talking about failing schools at the Tory party conference, teacher Katharine Birbalsingh suggests in the Telegraph that Michael Gove's idea, which will allow heads to sack bad teachers and give pay rises to good ones, may be halted by workplace politics:
"The problem with Michael Gove's reforms is that as well as requiring head teachers to be robust enough to implement them, they also require the young, talented teacher, just out of university, to have enough backbone not to mind being scorned by his colleagues. For that's what is likely to happen if you pay them more for being good at their jobs. After all, teachers, like pupils, want to be liked, and they want to have friends in the workplace."
In the Daily Mail Max Hastings offers a list of those he predicts will resist change:
"But be in no doubt about the significance of the Education Secretary's plans: they amount to a declaration of war on the teaching establishment and the principles which have dominated state schools for more than 40 years.
"Educational theorists, along with many civil servants in the Whitehall education machine, the zealots who run teacher training colleges and tens of thousands of teachers will fight tooth and nail against almost everything Mr Gove wants to do."
In the Guardian Zoe Williams says that Mr Gove has missed the obvious target for reform - Ofsted:
"So a government appoints people who aren't teachers to set targets; those same people then attack schools for being too target-driven; and a new regime sets new targets to break the spell of the old targets. It would be more interesting, productive - and cheaper - to reform Ofsted, so that it drew its inspectors from among the best of the active teaching population. The 'target' problem would probably solve itself."
Steve Richards argues in the Independent that there is an inconsistency in Mr Gove's aim to drive up standards while allowing free schools to make their own decisions:
"In its complacent selfishness, the drive for free schools is part of an atomised reactionary vision at odds with Mr Gove's resolution at the centre. I know he would disagree intently, arguing that his resolute ambition is all about giving power and responsibilities away to teachers, heads and parents, but I do not see a coherent picture. There is a difference between a [reactionary's] desire to let a thousand flowers bloom even though many will die in the creative chaos, and a ministerial recognition that a government must seek a rise in standards in every school, especially those with the least promising intakes."
David Blackburn says in the Spectator that he supports the idea but that Mr Gove's efforts to improve school standards may be in vain:
"I fear that the White Paper will not be transformative, for a simple reason: the schools system is broken. It doesn't respond to instructions. The Education Secretary does not run education - power rests with local authorities and the teaching unions. They're not too keen on Gove, and have allies in parliament ready to insert the odd amendment into legislation. Top-down instructions won't work. Only competition can deliver the transformation he seeks. That can only come from his 'free schools' programme."
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