{"id":1007,"date":"2012-07-06T11:59:06","date_gmt":"2012-07-06T10:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=1007"},"modified":"2012-07-07T12:45:56","modified_gmt":"2012-07-07T11:45:56","slug":"school-governors-dear-leader-issues-slap-in-the-face-to-waffling-worthies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/?p=1007","title":{"rendered":"School Governors: Dear Leader issues slap in the face to waffling worthies"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Michael<\/a>
Waffling? Surely only politicians are allowed to do that? Michael Gove holds forth: read a riposte from Francis Gilbert here<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>As a school governor, you can imagined how cheered I am this morning to learn that this headline appears on the front page of the Times<\/em> website [paywall]<\/em><\/a>: ‘School governors condemned by Gove: School governors are ‘local worthies seeking a badge of status and the chance to waffle about faddy issues”‘.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I fear I’m not willing to pay News International to read the full article, but am not surprised to see that Michael, as a former Times<\/em> journalist (and married to Sarah Vine, currently on the staff), has ensured a front page story on his own paper once again, as well as copious coverage in the Telegraph<\/a> and the BBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I picked this up from Warwick Mansell<\/a>, who also reports ‘Emma Knights, of National Governors’ Association, says: “We’ve had a lot of talk from Michael Gove about governance but not very much about how to improve things…”‘ Emma Knights told the BBC<\/a> her organisation was ‘incredibly disappointed by the language of the secretary of state’.<\/p>\n

It seems Michael Gove has also had a pop at teachers (‘NUT “embracing Trotskyism” at national conference’), so he’s trotting out popular targets (trotting out Trots<\/em> – see what I did there?) to endear him to his fellow-travellers in The Party. Well, as we know, if the Dear Leader doesn’t like governors, he can sack them and appoint his own – does that make the new ones waffling worthies too?<\/p>\n

Meanwhile – and I fear to depress you more, but as I’m in waffling mood – <\/em><\/p>\n

One responsibility of school governors is to ensure the reporting of statutory tests, such as the recent phonics test for 6 year olds. The DfE’s planned Key Stage 2 English grammar, punctuation and spelling test materials for 2013 are now online here<\/a><\/strong> (see the bottom of the page). Geoff Barton<\/a>, a secondary head, was moved to comment: ‘Look at question 12 and imagine how children will be taught. Read, then weep.’
\n

\"DfE<\/a>
Wait at the door? Whatever for? Ah: think about it!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

Of course, this is really just another faddy issue we shouldn’t waste our time waffling about. <\/p>\n

Stop press: There’s more on Michael Gove’s speech in the Telegraph today<\/a><\/strong>, where his claims that boards of governors resemble ‘Victorian parochial church councils’ is accompanied by an attack on the National Association for the Teaching of English<\/a> as well (in the process getting the name slightly wrong – well, that’s journalists for you). This calls for a separate post, had I but world enough and time….<\/p>\n

But Francis Gilbert has written a detailed response<\/a><\/strong>, complete with a refutation of his slur on NATE, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gove: School governors are ‘local worthies seeking a badge of status<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,132,103,111,27,81],"class_list":["post-1007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","tag-gove","tag-governors","tag-grammar","tag-phonics","tag-punctuation","tag-spelling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1007"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1032,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1007\/revisions\/1032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.literaryconnections.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}