Another Day, Another BBC Online Pro-Labour Report

200K London Superhead? Yer 'avin a larf in't ya?

I know, I know - if you wanted to read about how bad the BBC is, you'd make your way to the first rate "Biased BBC" blog. But I just can't help it, mainly because every day with relentless regularity, the BBC - particularly its online news incarnation - confirms all my suspicions about it. The chief suspicion, of course - that the BBC is institutionally left wing, pro-Labour and viscerally Tory-hating - can hardly be called a 'suspicion' any more since so much evidence to prove this is right beyond any reasonable doubt has been forthcoming over the years. Lame BBC managerial and editorial statements to the contrary have become a joke.

You, as I often do, might be wondering to what lengths the BBC will go in pursuit of its propaganda goals. Well, today we have yet more data to show that "any" is the answer. Consider the farce of Ed Balls' entire education strategy for the past three years, given plummeting literacy and numeracy levels and ever-dumber standards in exams. Consider, for instance, the £10Bn+ that has been frittered away over and above the £30Bn school building and refurbishment programme, now being gallantly corrected by Michael Gove.

Consider also today's extraordinary news that a primary school head teacher has been raking in 200 large a year on the back of, we assume, some half-decent administration of a small school, the consequence of another Balls brainchild, "City Challenge". Jackpot! At least for Mark Elms, that is, who, it seems, is some kind of hyper-teacher, a true saviour capable of healing the educationally sick and giving the word-blind sight. At least I assume that's how good he is otherwise why is he troughing eight times more for running a primary school than a close relative of mine retired on after 35 years of highly distinguished teaching and administration in the secondary sector? No one, but no one, in the education industry is that good.

It seems the BBC's reporter, one Hannah Richardson, disagrees. I'll quote a bit of it, but you will need to read to whole thing to get a taste of just how extraordinarily one-sided it is - and I mean in favour, by implication, not of the teacher in question, but of the brains behind the ridiculously expensive but "prestigious" (according to Richardson - you betcha, girly! Anyone who can syphon off 200k from the government for running a primary school deserves some kind of admiration) "National Leader of Education" programme, Edward BALLS.

For this work, at his 400-pupil school, Mr Elms receives a basic salary of £82,417.This is well within the maximum head teacher pay rate of £109,000 for large inner London state schools.

The bulk of the £200,000 pay package he received last year was for the work he did on the London Challenge and City Challenge project over two years.

These schemes support schools in challenging circumstances and have been very successful in improving education in deprived areas of the country.

Well now, pardon me for complaining, but does this or any of the other half-baked comments she makes in her little piece remotely justify giving one man two hundred grand for running one school, no matter how bad it had become in a Labour-run inner city area. As I said, however, it's important to recognise that that's not the real purpose of this dizzyingly-spun article. The real purpose for this editorially on-message young BBC hackette is to speak out for a very expensive, and highly divisive, Labour schools policy, and therefore, by implication, up for Balls.

Gladly, if the rider at the top of the old Department for Children, Schools and Families, website dedicated to this policy from the incumbents is anything to go by, the "City Challenge" policy Ms Richardson seems to like so much, and Mark Elms obviously loves, is now as defunct and kaput as the failed government that spawned it. It goes:

A new UK Government took office on 11 May. As a result the content on this site may not reflect current Government policy.
All statutory guidance and legislation published on this site continues to reflect the current legal position unless indicated otherwise.
To view the new Department for Education website, please go to http://www.education.gov.uk

I like it! Seems Hannah Richardson was reporting on a dead policy walking, regardless of her motives for doing so.

Time she and the BBC woke up to the fact that Labour is out of office, and that their cosy world of protected political bias is no longer as safe as they might like to believe. Just as Mark Elms can expect no more ridiculous bonuses (or perhaps "bribes" would be a better word) for doing his job in a less than salubrious area of the Smoke, left wing BBC hacks, editors and managers can expect no more sanctuary in a public institution that urgently needs to be given back to the public, or go the way of the "Department for Children, Families, Schools, Pets and Wasting Money", Ed Balls and the entire, trainwreck New Labour Government.

Do you think they get that yet? I don't.

Another Word About Michael Gove

My admiration for the man has, if anything, risen even further after his dignified apology to the House of Commons in a personal statement he made in the past few minutes.

Of course it's a cause for concern that 25 schools were left with the impression they were going to enjoy the post-Labour luxury of refurbishment, at massive cost to the taxpayer, through the astonishingly inefficient Balls Future Schools policy, but after his sincere apology about the inaccuracy of the lists released on Monday, which is ultimately a Civil Service issue for which the education minister is properly taking ministerial responsibility - Labourists take note - Gove's reputation remains intact, if not enhanced.

Compare and contrast the reputations of the screaming Labour benches with their fake anger, wallowing in the deepest of hypocrisy. Compare their behaviour and reach the only conclusion possible: not only are they not fit for government, after the hideous unpleasantness of Tom Watson MP, for example (shrieking baseless accusations and vicious insults directly at Gove), a fair proportion of them aren't fit to be Members of Parliament. That will be crystal clear to any sane person watching the exchanges.

There is one other point that's emerged from this latest parliamentary spat and it concerns Bercow. He seems to think the being "Speaker" means he has to speak all the time. He appears to imagine that not only must he intervene to keep order, he must pass judgment on every point made, especially on the Tory side. He apparently considers his condescending, smug, self-publicising manner is appropriate for the great office of state he's attempting, and failing, to fill. I've seen this odious man in action long enough now to know that he's little more than a catspaw for Labour, no doubt to please his wife. He's got to go before he does any more damage to the proper business of parliament and the reputation of the House of Commons. He's that bad.

So, this procedural storm in a teacup, predictably stirred-up by the malignant, mendacious opposition and, one has to say after his questionable interventions and rulings today, by their tame placeman in the Speaker's chair, Bercow, will soon blow over. But the debris left in its wake will not represent obstacles to Gove's or the coalition's programme of righting Labour wrongs and getting their disastrous, spiralling deficit under control. Far from it. Gove's statement has re-established the principle of ministerial responsibility (I have no doubt he offered his resignation to David Cameron, judging by the depth and sincerity of his apology on behalf of his department) after all those years of abuse by the previous Labour regime. It has also revealed the pettiness and revisionism of a contemptible Labour contingent unable to take any responsibility whatsoever for their role in causing the worst crisis in British public finances for, to quote one of their number, sixty years.

Perhaps that's what Gove was doing: smoking out the dishonest, discredited cabal of ex-ministers and their sweaty-toothed left wing comrades on the backbenches with sincerity. It's possible - he's that clever. However, I prefer to think that he was just doing what he thinks is right - owning-up, taking responsibility and apologising for the error. Insodoing he has left no one in any doubt as to his good faith and decency, and cast massive ones over a large swathe of Labour party members'.

"Good faith and decency"? Thy name is not the oily, weasily Bercow, and certainly not the scrofulous Tom Watson. Thy name is Michael Gove.

A Word About Michael Gove

Education is an area that interests me intensely so it might not be surprising that I'm spending the early evening watching the education funding statement on the parliament channel at this very moment (exciting, eh?).

Suffice to say, and in the spirit of his refreshing brevity and precision, Michael Gove is giving one of the more polished parliamentary performances I've seen in defending his policy of suspending Ed Balls' pie-in-the-sky, dishonest pre-election plans for building and refurbishing 700 schools. A number of facts are emerging thanks to Gove's extraordinary mastery of the detail, not least among them the bureaucratic waste, vast inefficiency and dreadful mismanagement of PFI contracts by Ed Balls and the department he apparently headed (even though he seemed far more busy most of the time trying in his role as Gordon Brown's barely house trained thug, propping up the auld fraud and protecting him almost 24/7 from his own cabinet, a full time job in itself).

Gove's handling of the various whining Labour opposition MPs, moaning about things that their own pathetic leadership brought down on them, is just breathtakingly good. The more insulting and detached from reality they become, the more witty and precise his answers become and, in a spiral that can only ever tarnish the grim image of the socialists further, causes the Labour MPs to become even more insulting and detached from reality.

The reason for this is simple: the principles underpinning Gove's policy initiatives, even ones that amount to large but necessary cuts in the education budget at a time, thanks to the disastrous failures of the previous government, of great insecurity in the public finances, are bullet proof. Better value for money, less bureaucracy and higher standards through greater choice are on offer. And you would bet your house that Gove is the sort of man who will deliver.

All poor old Balls, the biggest villain of this piece, can do meanwhile is moan about the list of affected schools not being available in the Commons library for a handful of minutes. That really is the best he can do - and it's not very good, is it? I think I can predict Gove's response: "Ball, E: must do better, but on the strength of past performances probably won't. D-".

Gove is a truly impressive figure - everyone knows that. But when he's up against the likes of feeble Balls and his ilk on the opposition benches, he looks like a world beater. Cameron beware!

Oh dear. And Balls is still moaning away - this time about his money fiddling of that dodgy Islamic faith school some aeons ago. Labourists - you've gotta love 'em (sort of). They are totally clueless. It's a wonder to me they remember to breathe.

For them to be whinging about pre-announced policies is just priceless!

Getting Education Right

Gove will have to take-on the teaching unions -
and he will win

I was pleased to read last night on the Spectator website that 1100 schools have already taken up Michael Gove's invitation to opt for 'Academy' status (basically to opt out of LEA control in the old parlance). I remember last week some heavily unionised lefty university 'expert' on state education, or whatever she was, on Radio 4 (where else?) trying to poo poo the whole thing with the usual nonsense about it creating a two tier system. Well, it didn't before - at least not in the sense she meant - and it won't this time. Opting out leaves more central funding available for schools that need the boost, so that they too can eventually become more independent, manage their own affairs and rid themselves of stultifying state prescribed educational ideology, so long the blight of the education system of Britain - at least since the evil that was the late 60s/early 70s was perpetrated.

In any case, what's so bad about a few high standards for once? What socialists, especially ones who think they're educators of some sort, don't get is that academic aspiration is as natural as any other form of ambition. It cannot simply be magicked away with a wave of some socialist wand, or, more likely, suppressed through some sort of highly divisive forms of social engineering. There is demand for genuine quality - elitism, even - and it will never go away, whether people like Ed Balls think they can make it go away with their interfering, top down interventionist, ideologically motivated lawmaking or not. The point is they haven't - and never would have. Socialists have always thought they could mould human nature by manipulating society by using taxation and interventionist laws as some sort of blunt, clunking sculpting tools. Signs are, after another 13-year dose of them has caused another national cataclysm, that they will never change. They will never understand that,as history shows, the many glorious aspects of human nature evolve gradually over time, and the best politics is the politics that evolves with it, reflecting it while simultaneously creating a society in which the aspirational, ambitious, optimistic, adventurous parts of human nature have the opportunity to flourish.

Still, even though the socialists have once again failed to break the population's general spirit, though they tried as hard as ever, especially through our schools, not least by diluting the exams system to the point where GCSEs, for instance, are almost completely worthless now as tests of a child's intellectual and academic development in any given discipline (especially for prospective employers), you have that nagging sensation in the pit of you stomach that Michael Gove has arrived just in the nick of time.

First, we have the Academies, liberating good schools from central control. Then, we have the other two thrusts of Gove's brilliant, triple-pronged revolution, of which the most important by far is the dismantling of Labour's insane education quangocracy, itself a heavily politicised, labyrinthine, undemocratic, bureaucratic nightmare designed for one purpose: social capture. Gove's already started by abolishing the General Teaching Council (thank God) and two others. The former organisation was designed quite simply to create and monitor a generation of under-experienced, under-educated, over-trained, over-paid, indoctrinated teaching robots - and exclude all others. It worked! Well, its website (all these damn quangos have elaborate websites that seem to mimic government departments' - anyone ever noticed that?) published this note from the gallows yesterday:

The Secretary of State for Education announced on Tuesday 2 June his intention to introduce primary legislation in the late autumn which will abolish the General Teaching Council for England.

In response, the GTC said: 'The GTC was created by Parliament to work in the public interest to improve standards of professional conduct among teachers, to contribute to raising standards of teaching and learning and to raise the standing of the teaching profession.

'We are seeking legal advice on our position and will be seeking urgent clarification from Ministers and Department for Education officials on the implications of today’s announcement for the GTC’s work over the next period and for its staff and Members.'

Looks like they ain't going to go gentle into that good night. So much the better. A public spat will finally bring a bit of scrutiny to bear on these shadow/duplicate government organisations, so expensive and so suspiciously beloved by Labour, that have sprouted up like so much fungi on a fallen oak.

Oh yes, the second part of Gove's three prong revolution is the so-called free schools. Brilliant, and like all organic children of private enterprise, some will fail but most will succeed spectacularly, which will no doubt irritate that lefty, GTC-type woman on Radio 4, who tried to poo poo these too as being 'unprofessional'. Unprofessional? Ha! If the chaos and despair we currently have in Britain is what 'professionalism' (socialist style) delivers, then bring on the amateurs! In fact, and joking apart, I think that Gove has already worked this out. He's trying to break a monopoly of education supply that's grown up over the past thirty or so years, and that has betrayed our children so comprehensively and failed this country so utterly. He knows that the only people who really, genuinely care - or should care - about children's education are parents, not teachers (and especially not unthinking, doubleplusgoodthinking, inadequate young robot teachers). That parents are somehow 'amateurs' should not preclude them from having a huge say in their children's school career.

I know, I know, there's more to it even than all this. All I'm really saying is that Gove looks to me like the real deal - and he must be supported fully and without hesitation. However, having said that, judging by that GTC comment, which is public remember, he is going to be pissing off an awful lot of establishment interest groups (and remember, the left is the establishment in education). Perhaps that's his intention. Well, if it is, he needs to remember that annoying quangos before you dispatch them is one thing, annoying the NUT, with its 300,000 members is quite another. Though having said that, his abolition of the GTC has, strangely enough, gone down reasonably well with the NUT. Its General Secretary, Christine Blower, said yesterday:

"From its inception, the GTC has struggled to overcome the fact that teachers felt it had been imposed on them. Equally, the annual fee of £36.50 has remained a sore point. The NUT has consistently argued that teachers should not have to pay the GTC fee.

"Under the GTC, teachers now feel over-scrutinised. Last year's 'code of conduct' was a worrying development, encompassing activities and behaviour outside of work. It sought to turn aspirations for best practice into rules. Any replacement for the GTC needs to distance itself from the belief that a watchdog can also reserve the right to make intrusive judgments on teachers' personal lives.

I wouldn't count on this superficially supportive sentiment lasting too long if I were Michael Gove, however. She goes on:

"Rather than have outright abolition, all teachers ought to be consulted on whether they believe a professional council for teachers should be maintained. What we cannot have, however, is a council which is at the whims of any Secretary of State. If we are to achieve the holy grail of evidence based policy making, free from political interference, there would be merit in looking at the recent proposal for a Chief Education Officer along the lines of the Chief Science and Medical Officer."

Interesting, isn't it? The NUT was quite prepared to put up with Balls' eternal meddling and politicised interventions. It was even happy, in the end, to put up with the sinister GTC's politicised prescriptions and intrusions. Why? Because Balls is a comrade and the GTC is basically populated by comrades. As soon as Gove comes along, however, with his exciting (or terrifying, if you're a comrade) brand of pragmatic radicalism and a fresh educational philosophy, the time has come for another quango, quick! Or, at the very least, an expensive, 'independent' tsar civil servant who used to be a professor of something or other mildly educational at the University of Brixton, but who, above all, is a comrade.

Gove is definitely doing something right!

Only The Tories Are Listening to Parents

Something struck me yesterday about that whole SATS hoo haa, with education unions about to boycott them, and it was this. In all the news coverage that I saw, not one reporter had thought to ask any of the people who really do count when it comes to education, namely, the 'customers': parents and children. The teachers' and Heads' views are all very well and the benefits or deficiencies of SATS testing is still very much moot.

What's unacceptable is the idea that teachers and Heads, as much as the (Labour) politicians themselves, believe that they can just do what they like without even considering the possibility that the one group they should be consulting, parents (and children, to a certain extent, although I have a fairly old-fashioned view about pupil power), should be sounded-out.

The letter to the Guardian today signed by 650 parents groups, criticising the excruciating Balls and his Labour chums for rubbishing Tory plans for the deregulation of the entire school system, will prove this reality to every sane person. Every sane person, that is, apart from the people who really do need to be re-educated: teachers, Heads and socialists (are those terms tautological?). The Spectator has written something good about this.

But there are two other things that this letter proves that are just as significant:

1) Parents will not be ignored any more and will have their say on these matters, and demand that their right to choose the educational future of their children is respected, and whether agenda-driven, 'we know best' educators (believe me, they don't), officials and politicos like it or not.

2) The Tories have been listening for a long time, and Michael Gove has created a plan that in my view takes a manifesto to that happy place that is so often so hard to reach: a policy that is affordable, popular and right.

The Tories have won the argument on education. Let's hope they win the argument on running the rest of the country too.

I still believe they will, not least because they deserve to, but also because I believe that with policies like this one, they will convince enough people of this reality so they agree with me.

We'll see.