Aibu to hate Michael Gove?

[merrycola]

AIBU to hate Michael Gove for single-handedly creating the “overdiagnosis” crisis he’s now nowhere near enough to answer for?
Because let’s connect the dots.
He made the curriculum harder, narrower, and more rigid. Ofsted built an inspection framework around it that treats children like data points. And now — years later — we’ve got CAMHS referrals through the roof, school avoidance at record levels, exclusion rates climbing, teachers quitting in droves, and a growing media narrative that too many children are being diagnosed and parents are being pushy.
But nobody seems to want to say the obvious thing: we didn’t suddenly produce a generation of broken children. We built a system that broke the environment around them and then pathologised the ones who couldn’t cope.
The strategies that actually help — clear instructions, sensory breaks, mutual respect, not shouting — aren’t special needs strategies. They’re just good teaching. But there’s no time for good teaching when you’re trying to force a curriculum designed by a man who apparently thinks childhood is an inefficiency to be optimised.

And here’s what really gets me. Every education secretary since could have undone it. But none of them have, because reversing course would mean admitting the whole framework was wrong and that it’s been harming children for over a decade. So instead we get headlines about overdiagnosis and parents wanting labels for benefits, while the man who lit the match is off doing whatever Michael Gove does now.

We didn’t get an overdiagnosis crisis. We got a system that can’t admit it failed, so it diagnosed the kids instead.

I really hope all teachers/ ex teachers/ parents/ anybody else who cares about children will respond to it and make the strength of feeling known about how the Education Secretary’s proposals will quite obviously make an awful situation worse.

Doubling down on the failed “one size fits all” approach and dumping all children in mainstream schools and calling it “inclusivity”, removing disabled children’s legal right to access an appropriate education and claiming school staff can assess the impact of medical issues, is quite clearly going to make things far, far worse for all children.

The disingenuousness of claiming that this is for thr benefit of children is digusting when it is very obvious that the whole thing has been shaped around how to cut already inadequate budgets further. They could at least have the decency to admit that out of all public expenditure what they have decided is a good thing to cut is the education budget which is woefully underfunded already and even without these proposed “reforms” has a further 4% real-terms cut already built in before the end of this Parliament based on Rachel Reeves’ departmental spending plans.

Everything Phillipson is proposing is the opposite of what needs to happen: dump even more children in mainstream schools who should not be there, remove the minimal specialist support children with disabilities can access in mainstream schools when dumped there currently (after a long legal battle) by removing their legal right to have any support or for the parents to appeal, have overworked SENCOs who have no medical knowledge design support for them and actually CUT the funding for them to do so, and cut the education budget even further.

This Government does not care about children and anybody who does must speak up now or things will get far, far worse.

This will affect all children in mainstream state schools and make already disrupted classrooms completely unmanageable because children who need support to cope will have the minimal amount they receive now removed, leading to total chaos.

If your thread leads to teachers and parents who do actually care about children being educated answering the consultation then it will be worthwhile.

I do hope at least a few people will speak up for the autistic but very well-behaved children like mine who are being deliberately traumatised by these callous people who pretend that they do not exist.

Genuine question - does the 'National Curriculum' still exist? This feels like a very 90s thing.

Even though we had SATs in year 9 in the 90s , teaching was genuinely more fun. Better when the SATs went for a few halcyon years until that was replaced by 'make years 7-9 just like GCSE'. It really does feel like the English can't cope without a test.

Here are the links.

The way they are trying to portray it as for the benefit of children is Kafkaesque.

https://consult.education.gov.uk/send-strategy-division/send-reform-putting-children-and-young-people-firs/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-send-reforms-sheets

I feel like 50% of the remotely interesting threads likely to lead to interesting debate on MN are AI generated these days. The question is, who is doing it and why? Well I have my suspicions, in spite of what MNHQ says.

I’ll be honest, I’m a victims rights campaigner with no political interests beyond all adults being safeguarding literate.
this is a personal rant about a man I dislike who I don’t think has been held accountable. If it embarrasses one of the parties to do something about it good.

I wasn't suggesting this thread was AI generated, just that so many obviously are.

I have raised the same concerns as you and asked for transparency. I thought you thought I might be some reform type and I’d like to reassure you I am not.
i hate Nigel farage too but there’s enough people raising that issue for me

Describe the aspects of your children’s school that broke them? I’m interested.

Disagree. The most educated nations are also the happiest and often healthiest, it isn’t a coincidence. Blair wasn’t wrong with this and I detest the notion of working class kids being told not to go to university because they don’t belong there and should get in their boxes and do an apprenticeship. There’s also no such thing as a ‘worthless’ degree. All education is valuable.

Fees shouldn’t have been tripled. Arts and humanities also need to be valued again. We need more critical thinking, not less. There’s one thing AI can’t currently recreate and that’s the feeling art gives you - be that a painting, book, piece of music, theatrical production, film. It can solve complex mathematical equations and engineer bridges.

I was educated in the 70s and 80s, as was my husband. My parents sent me to private school but my husband went to state.

To this day I’m shocked at how little he learned at school about spelling and grammar. I had to teach him about colons and semicolons and the difference between adjectives and adverbs. He is a bright man but said it was just not taught properly at school. I can remember the exact homeworks I had different differentiating between colons and semicolons, and exercises on metaphors and similes. He had nothing.

I dont like Gove.
Phonics is a highly effective system to teach children to read words. It isn't a complete English curriculum, it is just a strategy to teach a crucial foundational skill. It is evidence based. A minority of children still dont progess with reading with phonics based strategies. Apropriate tier 2 & 3 support then needs to be planned for these children. There are less children who require this support when you start with effective phonics teaching.
Different curriculum aporoaches post Year 9 dont need different schools. All children at my DD's school do English, Maths, Science + one MFL or history/geography. Students then choose options that can be or BTECs or all traditional academic subjects including triple science & further maths. Or a mixture of both. The core subjects could be shrunk if thst was considered gelpful.
I agree with many of the suggestions to enrich the curriculum, personalise pathways and offer more SEND support. However, we need to be upfront that this costs and requires more tax revenue/the diversion of funds from other areas. A minority of children at my DD's school used to access alternative provision alongside core English & Maths. They don't any more.
Why?
Money.

Honestly I don’t remember being taught anything aside from spellings and basic punctuation. My kids will talk about homophones and synonyms and I’m clueless. Equally they’ll rattle out maths language like quotients and numerator/deniminator, integer, inverse and obviously those mean something to me now, but the first time I heard any of that language was in my forties.

i cabsider my state education a travesty.

I remember in the early ‘90s, as the National Curriculum was being introduced,
seeing a hippyish style male primary school teacher on the television complaining, and saying no body actually needs to be able to do maths.

Some of the worst problems probably set in in the 70s and 80s though no doubt there must have been some good aspects.

I just had a memory of an English video we used to watch from the top-loading VHS recorder. Some spooky thing with a creepy house and a character with a nose like Pinocchio. I’ve unlocked a memory. I’m going to go and look it up as I reckon it was SPAG.

Our kids will be lucky to get state pension.
1 in 3 currently stop work with ill heath.
Push retirement age up that number has to increase.

I’ve just found the programme. It was Look and Read - Dark Towers. Honestly it’s so funny to watch the episodes. We had to say the phrase - Tracey is a loner. Then we had to spell it and write it 😆

Is that with Wordee and Magic Magic E? Geordie Racer?

I hate him because he de-valued design and technology from the curriculum.

Yes! I think those programs taught me English. I’ve just shown my kids the, ‘Tracy is a loner’ episode and we’ve all laughed far too much 🤣

Poor DS was totally let down by school. He got very poor results because it wasnt geared up to support him and his strengths at all. He's 43 now.
He did however manage to get into university to do fine arts eventually and is now quite a famous artist. Sorry I cant name him he dislikes social media and would be cross with me. He doesnt need to advertise.
School completely crushed him.

I don't agree with the OP that Michael Gove's reforms are the sole cause, though I am sure they made a contribution. If only by driving more good teachers out of the profession.

As for subsequent education secretaries, Gavin Williamson was even worse. He must have some serious dirt on some people to have even been considered.

So the next question has to be, how do they fix it, without being accused of dumbing it down?

@Placeoftides Please don’t put yourself down by saying you only work in a school kitchen. I’m almost 60 and still remember the lovely women who gave us dinner at my middle school. They were so kind, I was having an awful time at home as my Mother was widowed and lost the plot for a couple of years, my sanctuary. God it’s made me cry thinking about them, any member of school staff can make a difference to a child life, teachers were great as well I must add.

Very interesting point op and thanks for posting something so thought provoking.

HNRTFT but I completely agree. I also hate him because at the end of the Brown government they’d commissioned a report by experts in education to look at our system and make recommendations. They had the misfortune to publish it after the tories got in, and Gove looked at it- work done based on experience, data, understanding of pedagogy and child development- and dismissed it as work done by “the blob”. People whose skill and knowledge he could not hope to ever come close to, “the blob”. He’s a disgrace (and Labour should absolutely reverse what he did, in fact I think they may be trying to right some of the wrongs) and has done untold damage. None of which he has ever admitted or paid for.

Mind you, he was part of a series of terrible, disgraceful governments who did untold damage to our whole society, none of which the people in charge of have admitted or paid for, and never will.

I think fewer exams being taken could be a start, as well as ending SATs, or at least only having a maths and English test at aged 11.

No one should be taking ten or more GCSEs this summer.