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From the maker of Lara Croft: the teenager’s dream of a free school

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Gaming magnate Ian Livingstone is receiving flak from the likes of Toby Young for his ambitious plan to hone students’ coding skills…

guardiansmallLivingstone is widely hailed as the founding father of the British games industry. He launched Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing game that thrilled adolescents of the late 1970s and 1980s; co-founded Games Workshop, which became one of the biggest games companies in the world; and wrote or co-wrote 15 gamebooks in the Fighting Fantasy series, which has sold over 17m copies in 31 languages. He still has six friends round to his house regularly to play games, keep a record of the scores and compete for their own annual trophy. “I’m the current champion,” he tells me. “I love board games with like-minded friends, having a laugh, doing deals, reneging on them.”

But on the eve of his 65th birthday, he is talking to me about his plans for a network of free schools which, he thinks, can transform our approach to secondary education. He speaks quietly and rather flatly; there’s nothing flamboyant about him, and he sometimes sounds slightly bored, as if he’s reading out an inventory and would rather be playing games. But there’s no mistaking his conviction. “Children today are totally different from 50 years ago. They run their lives through social media and smart phones. They share their ideas and their creativity. They collaborate naturally.” Yet when they go to secondary school, he argues, they meet a regime of standardisation and conformity, requiring them “to memorise a lot of stuff they won’t ever need because they can google it or whatever”.

via From the maker of Lara Croft: the teenager’s dream of a free school | Peter Wilby | Education | The Guardian.

The disturbing certainty of Michael Gove – Is He A Monster? Anthony Horowitz in The Spectator

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An important and illuminating interview with the Secretary of State for Education, conducted by Anthony Horowitz.

I wish I’d seen this piece before last night’s Orion authors’ party. It would have been good to have a few minutes chatting to Horowitz about it.

Previously a Gove admirer and apologist, Horowitz finishes the interview thinking the man might be a monster.

It’s a longish piece and this is just the conclusion:

We are nearing the end of my allotted time and here is the impression that I have of a man for whom I have always had a very high regard. He is brilliant and erudite, doing an almost impossible job and doing it with passion and commitment. And yet it is just possible that the minister is a monster. I would not normally use such a word of a secretary of state but I am only picking up on something he said himself. Referring to the teachers who inspired him as a boy, he remarked, laughing: ‘There’s a direct relationship between the opportunities that I’ve enjoyed and their influence. They might now, like Victor Frankenstein, hold their head in horror and think “What have we created…?”’

It was the only moment of revelation in our encounter that struck me as truly insightful, the only awareness of the amount of power he wields. He assures me that he consults much more extensively than people believe, but continues: ‘One of the things that I think is a challenge here is that there isn’t a monolithic view within the teaching profession — about anything. It’s a bit like saying authors believe x or journalists believe x. There are some vocal people within the profession who might appear to be the dominant voices but by definition they can’t be representative: no one’s elected them.’ But actually there is one monolithic view that is out there and which will brook no argument. It is Gove’s.

My American friends are shocked by how much power one politician can have over a whole generation of children and even Gove agrees. ‘I do think that education secretaries do have too much power.’ (Even so, he has allotted himself around 50 new powers since he took office.) ‘But part of what I want to do is to ensure that lots of things that were fixed or arranged or decided in the Department for Education and its quangos are now decided in schools. And that’s the big change.’

His vision should be uplifting but I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed my encounter with Michael Gove. It’s very strange. I have argued with so many teachers and other authors that he is a wholly benevolent man, a reformer who is actually improving the lives of children across the country. Even now, that opinion has not changed. But nobody can be as certain as he is. Nobody can be right all the time. It’s his single-mindedness that troubles me, and so for all his quips, his humanity, his courtesy and his eloquence, I leave with the faint worry that, after all, I am the one who’s wrong.

via The disturbing certainty of Michael Gove » The Spectator.

Why is the government being so secretive about free schools?

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Laura McInerney is locking horns with Michael Gove and the DfE in an attempt to achieve greater transparency surrounding the application and approval procedures for free schools. The Information Commisioner’s Office has ruled in her favour but Gove is holding out and there will be an appeal tribunal (Gove and the DfE appleaing against the ICO’s decision) in the summer.

Here is Gove’s reasoning for withholding the requested information:

Q108 Pat Glass: Can I ask very quickly about the Information Commissioner? Why are
you refusing to publish free school applications and acceptance and rejection letters in line
with the ruling of the Information Commissioner? What do you have to hide?
Michael Gove: I have nothing to hide, but I believe that it is important that we protect
those people who put forward applications that may have been rejected because we know that
free school promoters and others have endured vilification and attacks. I do not think that
people who made applications on the basis that those applications would be treated in
confidence, and who may, if they have been unsuccessful, expose themselves to the risk of
intimidation, should be exposed to that risk by my actions.

Q109 Pat Glass: You talked earlier about the need to conform to the law. Why does
that not apply to you? The Information Commissioner has said you should publish these
things.
Michael Gove: We are appealing.

Q110 Pat Glass: If the tribunal says you must publish them, will you then publish
them?
Michael Gove: I will do everything possible to protect the confidentiality of those
people, and I hope that we will prevail. If at the end of the process I have no option but to
publish, then I will have no option but to publish.

Is McInerney waging this campaign because she is an opponent of free schools per se. Apparently not:

Of course, amid this mess some free schools are doing marvellously. I recently visited Greenwich free school, one of the most over-subscribed schools launched under the policy. I was impressed with the teaching, and the pupils, and I spent time discussing with school leaders how the school might continue being great. In fact, it is precisely because I want free schools to be great that transparency is so important.

And this makes it all the more important that the tribunal, when it is held in the summer, receives the widest reporting possible.

via Why is the government being so secretive about free schools? | Education | The Guardian.

5 Lessons From Derby: « Laura McInerney

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Laura McInerney raises five pertinent points about free schools, not least the question of when and how failing free schools are closed, procedures for which she believes the government has simply not considered.

4.  We need a process for closing  free schools

If the government is going to run with the line that “this is the inevitable consequence of innovation”, then it really ought to have a plan for that inevitability. Unlike in the US where most states now issues contracts with very clear quality measures, (so a school will knows the standards it is required to meet annually), the rules around what constitutes minimum required quality in England is fuzzy. There is confusion over funding agreements and Ofsted’s right to revoke a founder group’s ability to run a school. There is no clear line about the length of time a school has to get its quality sorted before takeover, or what processes it must go through. Al-Madinah have already openly questioned whether or not the government is entitled to try and close it on the basis of the current inspection. If these rules are not crystal clear (which I’m not convinced they are), any further action on Al-Madinah could become a lengthy tussle.

5.  Who will pay to close free schools?

Even if a free school closes willingly, there is still the problem of contracts. Property rent, computer equipment, cleaning companies. With no contract oversight (and in this case no reconciliation), who is responsible for buying out those contracts? What happens to buildings purchased? State education departments across the US have spent millions on legal bills trying to resolve issues of closure because they didn’t have clear rules decided in advance. I’d have sympathy for the government on this, if I hadn’t been telling them all along that this would happen.

via 5 Lessons From Derby: The Significance of Al-Madinah Free School « Laura McInerney.