Au revoir, then, GTC, watchdog of the profession. What fun we had. Oh how the fourth estate will miss you. Oh how Fleet Street’s finest (and, admittedly, this esteemed organ) will shed a tear for those little emails of joy that revealed the failings of some poor teacher. Little could David Blunkett, education secretary at the time of the GTC’s birth, have realised that his baby would perhaps be best remembered for revealing the extent of porn-viewing on school laptops. Or just how many sixth-form teachers discussed casual sex with their pupils.
So, fresh from abolishing the nation’s teaching watchdog last week, Education Secretary Michael Gove jumped out of bed on Monday ready for yet more action. He strolled in to the Commons and revealed to Parliament - and the world - more details of how he was going to slice #163;670 million off the Department for Education’s annual #163;59 billion annual spend this year. While still not wholly clear, it seems that one-to-one tuition’s cash is going to be hit, the Training and Development Agency for Schools is going to have to forego a wee bit of its funding mountain, and academic diplomas are not long for this world. A qualification stillborn, it has to be said.
Also confirmed as dead before birth was the Rose primary curriculum. Right at the point at which heads and teachers were stretching and lunging ahead of the Big Change Over, the new Coalition ministerial team confirmed that it was being consigned to the great big recycling bin in the sky. Just think how many “savings” could have been made if academic diplomas and the primary curriculum had never been developed. Ah well, that’s democracy for you.
Meanwhile, the cringing at Number 10 must have been audible as yet another “public school boys revealed using Class A narcotics” headline hit the mid-market tabloids on Wednesday morning. The story surrounded the drunken and drug-fuelled antics of sixth-form pupils attending the end-of-year prom at Latymer Upper in west London. The kids, of course, were promptly expelled. Who’d have thought it, Dave? Public school boys dallying with drugs? Who knew?
