Gove announces schools shake up

Tough new powers to stop pupils repeatedly re-sitting GCSEs and A-levels. New moves to make it harder for potential recruits to enter teaching, and easier to get rid of those who do. Fines for schools who wrongly exclude pupils, plus a responsibility to ensure any expelled pupils continue to get a full-time education.These are the key planks of the biggest educational upheaval for more than two decades which was announced yesterday by Education Secretary Michael Gove in his much-trailed government White Paper. – The Independent

Chris Keates, general secretary of teachers’ union NASUWT, said: “We are seeing a vicious assault by the secretary of state on teachers’ commitment and professionalism. We are now witnessing the plans for another lost generation of young people.” The Association of Teachers and Lecturers said Mr Gove was dismantling state education and Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham said the “elitist” reforms would create a two-tier system. Mr Gove laughed off spelling “bureaucracy” wrongly on the Commons statement. He justified the error by saying his “eyes glaze over” when he sees the word. – The Mirror

Mr Gove’s contradictory instincts take tangible form in his attitude to spending on school sports. Suddenly there is no “We will…” driving his approach. Instead he is dropping the ring- fenced cash that was targeted on sport. No doubt ring-fencing of cash has a sinister ring to it. It sounds indiscriminately proscriptive to those, including most in the Coalition, that regard the state with extreme wariness. But ring-fencing is a highly effective way of targeting tax payers’ money on a particular worthy cause and making sure the cash is spent productively. In this case head teachers popped up on the airwaves to say, whether the money was ring-fenced or not, they would continue to spend it on sports, only the cash was being scrapped altogether. – The Independent

SCHOOL sport co-ordinators have invited the Education Secretary to Bristol to see first-hand the work of the partnerships he wants to scrap. They believe the decision by Michael Gove to cut the £162-million funding for School Sport Partnerships will have a “devastating effect” on the sporting opportunities for young people in Bristol. And they claim hundreds of events will no longer take place if the £750,000 funding for the three SSPs in the city is pulled, as planned, in March. SSPs cover every school in the country. Each one consists of a sports college or academy, secondary, primary and special schools, working together to develop sport opportunities for young people. – Bristol Evening Post (more…)

Clegg pleads with students

Clegg said he would defend the planned trebling of tuition fees, despite campaigning for their total abolition during the election: “I will defend the government’s plan for reforming the funding of universities, even though it is not the one I campaigned for. It is not my party’s policy, but it is the best policy, given the choices we face.”

His remarks came as it emerged that threats to Clegg’s personal safety had led his security advisers to review his travel arrangements. He has been told by his protection officers it is no longer safe for him to cycle from his south London home to Downing Street, and that he must travel by car. He has also dropped plans to visit university campuses, once the heartland of his support base, until emotions have subsided. – The Guardian

Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, is expected to be handed a letter by a group of students who claim “no amount of twisted reasoning” can hide the fact the party lied to young voters. It will read: “In the general election hundreds of thousands of young people, many voting for the first time, chose your party … they identified in particular with your public pledge to oppose raising tuition fees.”We call on you to withdraw Lib Dem support for Conservative cuts to our education system, or face the disappointment and anger of a generation that has been betrayed.” Nick Clegg on Tuesday night urged students to call off the protest, claiming the coalition’s plans were “even fairer” than the graduate tax supported by the National Union of Students. – The Telegraph (more…)

Tory right anger over Ireland bailout

The Euro-sceptics in the Conservative party including John Redwood and Douglas Carswell believe Britain is becoming embroiled in a situation which is likely to only get more expensive and fear it will damage their ability to take political power back from Brussels. In addition, the Adam Smith Institute said that the Government’s decision to offer around £7 billion in aid, including direct loans to Dublin, was a “bad deal” for Britain. Ireland has been forced to take the £77 billion economic bail-out in a deal designed to save the euro. As a non-Euro country, the UK was not obliged to contribute but decided to offer support amounting to the equivalent of £300 per household because of the close trading relationship with Dublin. – The Telegraph

The Eurosceptic pressure on the government was highlighted when Douglas Carswell, a prominent backbencher, criticised plans for Britain to provide around £7bn in loans to Ireland. “We shouldn’t be paying to help keep Ireland in the euro,” Carswell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “If we are going to pay to solve this crisis we should be helping to pay Ireland to quit the euro.” Osborne reached out to the Eurosceptics shortly after Carswell’s appearance on Today by indicating that Britain’s help for Ireland was on a bilateral basis and that he was hoping to withdraw Britain from a €60bn EU (£51.34bn) fund. “It is a bilateral loan to Ireland to reflect the fact that we don’t want to be part of a permanent bailout mechanism for the euro,” the chancellor said. – The Guardian

Ed’s back

Returning from two weeks of paternity leave, the Labour leader said shadow Wales secretary Peter Hain would lead a review which will report to next year’s annual conference. The commission will look at policy, the party’s organisation and its relationship with the trade unions. Explaining why he did not enjoy being out of power, Mr Miliband told MPs: “You see the Tories and the Liberal Democrats doing terrible things and it is frustrating. But opposition is about the long-haul and digging in.” Shortly after the weekly meeting of Labour MPs, an ICM opinion poll for the Guardian put support for Labour at 38% – the highest it has been since October 2007. The Conservatives are down three to 36% and the Liberal Democrats dropped to 14%, their lowest result in an ICM poll for nearly 10 years. – Sky

Labour has pulled ahead sharply in the latest Guardian/ICM poll, as both coalition parties lose support. The findings, published as Ed Miliband returns to Westminster after paternity leave, suggest only a minority of voters believe the coalition is taking Britain in the right direction. Labour support in a theoretical immediate election has risen to 38%, two points higher than last month and the best in any ICM poll since Gordon Brown cancelled the planned 2007 general election. Between them the coalition parties have shed five points. Conservative support has dropped three since last month to 36%, while the Liberal Democrats have fallen two points to 14%. The Lib Dem score is the lowest in the Guardian/ICM series since May 2001, and the lowest in any ICM poll since October 2007. – The Guardian (more…)

Ed is back, and ready to fight

Ed Miliband launches his party on “the hard road back to power”, saying it has to move beyond New Labour and commit to changes in policy and organisation as profound as those introduced by Tony Blair in 1994. He also appears to clash with the shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, by saying a 50p tax rate for those earning more than £150,000 should be permanent, as a way of creating greater equality in Britain. Making the country more equal, he says, is one of the issues that gets him out of bed in the morning. – The Guardian

He disclosed that a commission on Labour’s organisation would be launched at the weekend. It will cover the contentious issue of leadership elections, including the influence of the unions which ensured he beat his brother, David, despite having less support from Labour MPs and members. There is also to be a policy review starting with “a blank page”, although “not in terms of values”. His views on the tax rate appears to contradict Alan Johnson, the Shadow chancellor, who has said previously that Labour “might not see the need for a 50p tax rate in five years’ time”. But Mr Miliband said the tax rate was not simply about cutting the deficit. “It’s about values and fairness and about the kind of society you believe in and it’s important to me.” – The Telegraph

Former Blairites who carp at Ed Miliband’s leadership are like “twitching corpses”, the Labour leader’s former rival, Ed Balls, said yesterday. Mr Miliband is returning to work today, having taken two weeks’ paternity leave after the birth of his second son, Samuel, amid grumbling in Labour ranks that he has not done enough to define what his leadership stands for. There have also been fresh rumours about plots to unseat Gordon Brown before the general election. But this talk was contemptuously dismissed by Mr Balls yesterday. “The papers are full of all of this sort of twitching of the old corpses of the past. Who cares?” he told the BBC. He also defended the Labour leader’s temporary absence from frontline politics. “He is on paternity leave and I think that’s a really good thing. One of the great changes in the last 10, 15 years under the Labour government was things like paternity leave becoming an accepted part of life. But he’s coming back and he’s going to be fighting hard.” – The Independent (more…)

Miliband committed to 50p tax “for foreseeable future”

Alan Johnson had surprised colleagues by saying that, in five years’ time, Labour might not see the need for the higher rate introduced by Alistair Darling earlier this year. But the Labour leader had indicated, along with other candidates in the party’s summer leadership election, that the 50p rate was permanent. Mr Miliband said in the summer that the new level of tax should stay because it was “not just about reducing the deficit, it’s about fairness in society”. He added: “Let me say plainly: I would keep the top rate of income tax at 50p permanently.” Yesterday, Mr Miliband moved to restate his commitment to the higher rate. His spokesman said: “We remain committed to it for now and the foreseeable future. – The Telegraph

Ed Miliband has started to retreat from his totemic pledge to make “permanent” the 50p top rate of tax, under pressure from Alan Johnson, his shadow chancellor. The Labour leader’s promise to take half the earnings of richer individuals in tax was a key part of his pitch for the Labour leadership, helping him to win union support and pip his brother David to the top job. But on Monday Mr Miliband began the latest phase of his drive to take Labour towards the centre ground, dropping his earlier insistence that a 50p rate should be retained indefinitely. “We remain committed to it now and for the foreseeable future,” Mr Miliband’s spokesman said – a shift in position that brings him into line with the more moderate views of Mr Johnson. – The FT (more…)

Lib Dems feel the heat

The Liberal Democrats are facing twin electoral assaults from the Green Party and the National Union of Students in the wake of the party’s U-turn on tuition fees. The Independent understands the Greens are drawing up a strategy to target Liberal Democrat MPs in the most marginal seats – a move which could potentially unseat up to 10 per cent of the party’s MPs. The Greens are unlikely to win the seats but they could do what UKip has done to the Conservatives and win enough votes to deprive the Liberal Democrats of a majority in several seats across the country. At the same time the NUS has announced plans to target high profile Liberal Democrat-held constituencies with large student populations including Nick Clegg’s constituency of Sheffield Hallam and Don Foster’s in Bath. They are also considering putting up a candidate in the Oldham East and Saddleworth by-election – which the Liberal Democrats hope to win from Labour following the ejection of former immigration minister Phil Woolas. The election will be the first big test of the Coalition’s popularity. – The Independent

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was struggling to contain a revolt over tuition fees yesterday as the party’s new president vowed to vote against the rise. Tim Farron MP, elected to the post on Saturday, also said the party would be “stark- raving mad” to deepen its alliance with the Tories. He challenged Mr Clegg by declaring he would oppose raising fees to up to £9,000 and appeared to back last week’s student demo, saying it made him feel “nostalgic” for his radical youth. Mr Farron said: “You would have to be stark-raving mad to think there’s any chance of a merger or closer relationship or a pact.” Shadow Business Secretary John Denham also weighed in with: “Nick Clegg has no credibility on tuition fees.” – The Mirror

Students are angry that the party has failed to stick to its pre-election pledge to oppose charging for university. The NUS claims Lib Dem MPs were elected on that promise and should now be removed from power. The campaign will target Mr Clegg in Sheffield Hallam, Simon Wright in Norwich South, Stephen Williams in Bristol West and Don Foster in Bath. Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, said the aim is to force out Lib Dems who break their pre-election pledge to oppose any rise in tuition fees. Mr Porter has said the NUS will urge a parliamentary recall for MPs who have broken their promises on tuition fees based on a coalition idea for holding MPs to account known as the “right to recall” initiative. – Sky News (more…)