ABSTRACT
The architects of Academies and Fee Schools give accounts of their philosophy (which some term ideology), and the areas of perceived policy division and consensus. There are discussions around statist centralisation and control set against devolution and subsidiarity; the hindrance of bureaucratic social engineering and the need to centralise power to the Secretary of State (/Department for Education) in order to disempower the ‘education establishment’ (termed ‘the Blob’). Some view the Gove Act as organic Burkean incremental evolution, and some as a radical revolution which offends against Mill’s ‘harm’ principle. The polarities are market/choice versus educational morality and economic social justice, but the consensus is around a social-democratic (Red Tory/Blue Labour) apprehension of mutuality and common purpose. There is some discussion of progressive pedagogy and the ‘traditional’ teaching favoured by Gove and Gibb, who expounds his ‘tyranny of the expertois’ – the ‘education establishment’ which works against institutional freedom and diversity.
