Counting the cost of Gove’s educational reforms

East London Lines, December 2012

This week, Michael Gove cherry-picked and squeezed a round of applause out of some ‘arts organisations’.

But who were they? Certainly not any of the cultural figureheads who have spoken out in shock at his proposal to remove arts subjects from the core curriculum. Nor was it one of the 26,000 people – and counting – who are petitioning for reform of Gove’s brainchild, the English Baccalaureate (EBacc).

The secretary of state also said that if Britain’s creativity buckles, he would not be able to sleep at night “knowing that the ghosts of Rutherford and Churchill” were hanging over his bed and chiding him for his failures.

Now, between you and me, I don’t think Michael Gove believes in ghosts, which might be why he felt no guilt as he deftly drew up his plans to alienate art students from the UK education system.

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