Proposed return to O-Levels/CSEs/Gove/Selection Controversy Summer 2012

I've left the controversy to bubble along for a few days to give the best articles some time to emerge. Here are a few....

Useful links here:
Guardian

• Original story
• Have GCSEs got easier?
• Clegg said neither he nor PM consulted by Gove 
• No. 10 says that the PM was consulted by Gove, Clegg made to look silly
• Criticism of the proposal
• Underlying personal and political reasons for Gove's proposals
• Clegg says he'll block the plan
• Excellent set of differing opinions in public letters. Guardian yes, but not always predictable in terms of opinions voiced (after all, anyone can write in to a newspaper).
• This article here is one of the best as it links in the underlying debate about the last 50 years of education policy regarding the grammar system VS. comprehensive system split. The author argues that Tory hardliners would love a return to the grammar system but that parents would not have it as it might leave their children behind. Gove, the author argues, is tapping into the Tory nostalgia for grammar school education. Remember Kent is a bit of an anomaly in that most of the country's education authorities scrapped the grammar school system and 11+ in the 1970s. Interestingly someone on Andrew Marr show this morning argued that the Tories knew that the LDs would block the o-level plan. The plan is, she argued, to 'dangle' tasty full-blooded Tory policies in front of Tory voters as if to say, "Look what we can give you if you give us a majority at the next election....Look how the LDs are holding us back."   Usually it is the LDs who take this kind of line hinting at the idea that the LDs are limiting the damage of a Tory government. This may be an example of the PM asserting the Tory position in coalition.
• Criticism of GCSE is nothing new and goes back many years.

Now for the Telegraph:

• Good blog post here
• The building of new grammar schools have been banned since 1998 but one way the coalition has tried to get around the ban without having to attract too much criticism for it, is by what some critics call the 'back-door' route. The grammar, to be built in Sevenoaks, Kent, will form an 'annexe' (add-on) of two existing schools in Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge. So it won't be a school in its own right but that won't bother parents who have been campaigning for a new grammar school in the town. Could more be on the way? See here.
• An interesting article defending Gove and his plans.
• Another here questioning the whether Gove can really succeed.
• Useful opinions here in the Telegraph letters
• Interesting Telegraph blog here from right-wing ex-Labour candidate,http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100166721/michael-gove-and-o-levels-if-hes-really-bringing-them-back-he-deserves-to-be-prime-minister/ Oxford Professor of History and Kentish-rake Tim Stanley, arguing that Gove should become prime-minister! I guess Tim no-longer harbours ambitions of being a Labour MP as he did back in 2005.