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.

Isn’t the rise of SEN issues just as likely to be about the fact that most people now have two full time working parents, minimal grandparental help and so little slack, plus more screens?

Then how can teachers be trained to teach it in a way that’s engaging and relevant?

And pupils absolutely should be studying social media. They should be learning to think critically about it and how to use it responsibly, and also how to harness and create it. So much of our exposure to advertising, new ideas, and debating current affairs happens over social media. Even this Talk platform on Mumsnet is social media and people are doing PhDs on it. Social media is where real discussions about relationships are happening, not during an 20 point question about the Macbeth’s codependent marriage.

Good, our most able children are going to be the ones generating wealth that pays the taxes for my pension (if it still exists and they don’t all flee the country). We need to have more respect for alternatives to university as a culture tbh.

Not exaggerating unfortunately 😞

Your kids won’t need to know how to code or build apps as Agentic / vibe coding will take care of that. The (tech) company I work for has recently fired thousands of people, many of whom were coders and software developers.

English Lit really shouldn’t be an option. The ability to read, understand and analyze a variety of texts is really, really important.

They're not "written off". They're channelled in a direction better suited to their abilities. It's both unrealistic and very expensive to think that all, or even a majority, of young people are university material - and people like you, who think of a non-university pathway as being "written off", are part of the problem.

Fronted adverbials sounded terrifying when I heard them too, but my kids understand them.

Ive just asked my ten year old and he said ‘ they are like, ‘at midday’, ‘beneath the water’ stuff like that. Comes at the beginning of a sentence before the verb.’ 😆

@MrsMurphyIWish - my nephew did iGCSE English lit last year (private school) and had far more flexibility and did not have to learn any quotes. Meanwhile, DD last year spent far too much time memorising quotes rather than going deep on understanding and cross text/context which is what he had the time to do.
Completely agree texts and formulas for maths/sciences should be provided but is this actually just another cost thing? They do not want everyone to purchase a clean copy book for the exam or do not want to provide it for free?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

He's also a racist mega open Islamophobe. A deeply horrible nasty person with views that are deeply disgusting and dangerous.

The curriculum is different in Scotland and as far as I'm aware there is little difference in rates of diagnosis of additional learning needs between Scotland & England. Not convinced you can blame school curriculum for this.

The Scottish Curriculum for Excellence is much worse than the English system, and to get through Highers you have to answer questions in a very specific structure- just knowing the facts doesn't get you marks, they have to be stated in a very specific way! It's awful and Scottish PISA scores are worse than England & Wales - as is school attendance.

I couldn’t agree more OP. He sent teaching back to the 18th century, endless fact based memorising and bloody SAT’s. So many children simply can’t cope with the environment he created. Every teacher I know hates the curriculum and the fact it has no flex to work with the kids you have. It’s all targets.

If you look at the job market and AI, it is middle management positions that are likely to go and practical hands on jobs which will thrive. To develop fine motor skills, planning, critical thinking, team work and applied knowledge of chemicals etc all very important. The education system should be thinking about how to train the next construction worker, plumber, hairdresser, chef, care worker as much as the next doctor/engineeer/pharmacist/lawyer, right from the start. For those self employed, basic accountancy and tax skills are really important as well as financial awareness. So I think pathways from year 9 would be the best. Most kids know by year 9 whether they are going to be able to do A levels or not. It is already in the GCSE sets mostly,

You should look at how the Swiss do it. University is excellent and cheap but is only for a few. There is big weeding out of students at the end of the 1st year of uni. Many other pathways are on offer, and apprenticeships are excellent and a respected route to a career. When I first came to live here, the young man who helped me open my account was a 16 year old banking apprentice. He has been working his way up in the bank ever since. In the UK you'd need a degree in finance and a mountain of student debt to do what that 16 year old was doing very competently. He had deliberately chosen not to go the uni route as he just wanted to get out and work.

Ive been teaching for almost 30 years and I remember the changes being brought in by Give and it was horrifying.

Part way through Year 11, he scrapped the 20% speaking and listening element in English. My class had already done 2 of the 3 assessments and suddenly we were told these did not count and the extra. 20% was lumped into the exam. Utter madness!

GCSE History went from 2 units and coursework to 4 massive topics - all exam. It’s almost impossible to complete the course in KS4. It’s just cramming lots of facts int kids and Hopi g some stick as there’s no time for revision.

I suddenly found I was teaching A level stuff at GCSE and then at A level teaching things from my degree. A level history coursework is like its own course - another teacher said it was its own EPQ!

Why have practical subjects like Media now with so much exam assessment, rather than coursework? No one working in media is sitting exams but instead working on projects over time.

Gove did all this and more. A truly odious little man.

I agree with much of what you say but the point you are missing is that autistic children could cope with the system before MG made it more rigid and inflexible. Some of them got to adulthood before they were diagnosed. The harsh system coupled with stripping money from schools created an environment where they could no longer cope.

Agree. You’re not allowed to fine parents for taking holidays etc in Scotland and it just brings a general attitude that school doesn’t matter. At least a quarter of my child’s classmates are trailing up the road after I have dropped my child off.

In some of the highers they don’t much care what you write as long as you set it out in the proscribed way. There is zero respect for actual knowledge. It’s appalling.

I think this is going off topic slightly. The OP was about the harm done to children by trying to fit them into an education system that doesn't work for them. Sure everybody needs to do things that are good for them, some will enjoy the challenge, some won't. Some will be harmed by the trying.
Somehow we need to figure out a way of making the school years work for all children, so that they leave with a sense of who they are, what they are good at and how they can best engage with society. We all learn best when we are feeling positive, not stressed.

You haven’t made that sound any simpler. They do need to memorise lines from the poem to use in their analysis and what it means and they do get an unseen poem that they have to compare to another poem they’ve learnt and they don’t know which poems are going to relate to the one they get. I’ve tried to encourage mine to only learn some of them with a variety of themes and their English Tutor (who is also an English teacher) told them they needed to learn them all. So that’s where the anxiety stems from.

As a teacher friend of mine said in her twenty year career, "the hoops we have to jump through have got progressively smaller and higher". I feel for teachers - it is an amazingly stressful job and parents often don't help either so yes you are being a bit unreasonable to land it all on Michael Gove.

On MN, this always boils itself down to an argument about English Lit because there are a core of haters on here. But it's not English Lit the majority of kids hate. It's the English sodding Language GCSE which is by far the dullest thing one could ever encounter.

I teach film - and the kids get genuinely excited at the opportunity to analyse texts and to write creatively. They never get to write creatively in many schools post about year 8 - except 'descriptive' colour by numbers writing under exam conditions. I don't teach English any more. I fell out of love. It has become OBSESSED with assessments (along with most subjects now). Sadly this looks externally to many people (especially at secondary level) like 'better teaching'. I mainly blame Gove and his ideological stance about coursework , creativity, end point exams and what teaching is (and free schools): but also the importing of pedagogical theory under New Labour from the USA charter school movement. And the application of 'direct instructions' to all subjects as if they all suit it. That's post Gove. A lot of what is blamed on Gove is also / actually Blunkett ,. amongst others

I loathe him . But need to correct a few myths. Having been educated myself in Scotland, much of what he imported and believed is actaully based on the Scottish system in the 70s and 80s which was quite rigid and very exam focused (great for people with the 'right' kind of mind like Gove, and me) . This is also where the numbers came from (but he reversed them, much to the annoyance of any Scot who has to explain their 1 in English is the highest grade!) I am surprised he didn't combine English and Eng lit into one subject actaully, as per Scotland. I wish he had actually. The AS followed by A2 was an attempt to ape Highers followed by CSYS.

Also, he is not especially public school boy privileged. He went to private school, yes : but not a very grand one (I am sure lots of his life has been about trying to mask this and climb upwards : I read a brilliant book about the Oxford set of that era once and it speaks of Gove. It's name will come to me at some point!) Gove is also adopted. He was born into considerable poverty to a single mother . I think because life worked for him , he believes in meritocracy pretty uncritically.

It came to me - the brilliant book is called Chums.

This should be shared far and wide. What an insightful and amazing post, I wish the government would listen.

Purely going by comments on here diagnosis takes about 3 years in England.
We would have been over 5 years if DS had made it to the end. GP put the referral in February half-term 2019 to it was Summer 2024 before DS was near the top of the list.

Makes me wonder if thats keeping the diagnosis rates artificially low in Scotland

Sue Palmer's book Toxic Childhood also speaks about the 'schoolification of childhood'. And this has got so much worse since she published in 2004.

My nephew was a "failure" at school due to undiagnosed dyslexia.
He didn't even have English and Maths GCSE when he left.
He started as a trolley boy for one of the big supermarkets and over 12 years has steadily worked his way up to store manager and now regional manager.
With no degree debt.
It's testimony to his spirit that he didn't let the lack of success at school define him, it would have been easy for this really bright and ambitious young lad to have ended up on the scrap heap.