Secretary of State for Education makes passionate speech with fullsome praise for Harris Federation

In his speech on 24th November, Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove said of the Harris Federation

 

"For generations the working class communities of South London have been tragically ill-served by council-run schools which consistently failed to secure a decent clutch of GCSEs or their equivalent for the overwhelming majority of their pupils.  It was assumed that the children could scarcely be expected to do better, given their backgrounds.  And parents were denied any meaningful information about how their children's schools performed relative to others so they had no real idea how badly they were being betrayed by those who took their votes, council rents and rates for granted.

But recently those families have been given an alternative.  Through a combination of league tables - fought by the Labour Party and the unions, schools free of council control - fought by the Labour Party and the unions, and headteachers free to hire who they want and pay them what they want - a principle also fought by the Labour Party and the unions.

As a result of these changes we can see that for example the Tory peer Lord Harris of Peckham now runs a dozen comprehensives which were once local authority controlled schools.  They draw pupils from the same communities that they always have, and they enjoy the same level of funding as all their neighbours.  But their results are incomparably better.  Ten times as many students get five good GCSE passes as a few years ago.  The rate of performance improvement is far faster than that of any neighbouring school.  And schools which once struggled to fill their classrooms are now hugely over-subscribed."

 

The full transcript of his speech can be found at :

http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2011/11/Michael_Gove_A_Liberal_Education.aspx