The revolution is under way – now Michael Gove must entrench it

The British education system is changing (Photo: Alamy)

These days, Michael Gove is noticeable for his absence. The Education Secretary has faded into the background. Like a submarine on a secret mission, he is in silent running, staying below the surface. He comes up occasionally to issue a press release or answer questions, but after the battering he suffered last summer, and the rigours of delivering the Coalition’s first and most far-reaching legislative triumph, he is happy to let others take the lead while he prepares the next offensive in the war on the education establishment.

It is worth recalling the precariousness of his situation a few months ago. Mr Gove was in the firing line, pushing his legislation through Parliament while being harried at every turn by his then shadow, Ed Balls. When the Education Secretary tried to scrap the last government’s bloated Building Schools for the Future fund, he was sabotaged from within his own department. A series of leaks reached Mr Balls, who used them to sow chaos and undermine Mr Gove’s authority. The Coalition had barely unpacked its pencils before one of its leading members was pinned down in a desperate firefight. Even his friends admit that for a while the usually irrepressible minister was deflated.

But while plenty delighted in his sufferings, not as many spotted that he kept going anyway. The reforms carried on, specifically the landmark legislation that allows state schools the freedom to operate independently of local authority control, which was pushed through both houses at speed. It was the first and, as time passes, perhaps the most important legislative milestone achieved by the Coalition. Mr Gove has been heard to compare his position last summer to that of the first troops ashore on D-Day, who had to establish a beachhead under withering fire. Since then, great advances have been made elsewhere, but it was he and his colleagues who led the way.

For a while, there was uncertainty about how quickly schools would come forward to apply to become academies. Six months ago, the hope was that by the end of this parliament, in 2015, half of the 3,100 state secondaries in England and Wales might have converted to academy status. It was a whispered ambition because the numbers seemed optimistically high: recent history suggested the gains might be far more modest. When Kenneth Baker introduced his ground-breaking city technology colleges, the early precursors of academies, it took the Thatcher administration five years to create just 15. Tony Blair, whose legacy in education is the academy idea now adopted by Mr Gove, only managed to create 17 in one term.

By those standards, Mr Gove’s achievements are remarkable. More than 450 academies have opened since last September. The total number has more than tripled since the Coalition took office: then, there were 203; there are now 658 in operation, while 1,070 schools have applied to join them. In all, a third of all secondaries are either now academies, or in the process of converting. The impact is far reaching. In Plymouth, for example, there are only two schools left in the hands of the local authority. It is noticeable that some of the most enthusiastic participants are in Labour strongholds such as Wakefield, Bradford and Coventry. Lib Dem MPs, initially sceptical, are queueing up to press Mr Gove to look favourably on academy applications in their constituencies. On current trends, the Coalition now expects that more than half will have converted not by May 2015, but by December next year. At current rates, who is to say it will not in fact be sooner?

For what we are seeing is that critical mass in this particular social revolution has been reached. From now, the pace can only accelerate. Certainly, the evidence beyond the numbers is that the switch to academies is being driven not by Mr Gove and his colleagues exhorting from the centre, but by heads and teachers who led the way and who are now telling their colleagues: come on in, the water is lovely. Like a previous reform that changed us deeply as a society – Mrs Thatcher’s right to buy – the numbers are increasing because those who have yet to convert can see the advantages secured by the converted. And when more than half of our schools have made the switch, the process becomes irresistible. That changes everything. A major report by the London School of Economics this week concluded that academies are improving standards in neighbouring schools: quality is contagious; competition drives up standards.

Part of the reason Mr Gove has withdrawn from the fray is that he knows one of the first rules of politics is that you can achieve anything if you allow someone else to claim the credit. At the moment, it is those who are living with academies who are the most effective salesmen for change. Academies bring freedom: financial freedom first and foremost, but also freedom from the dead hand of bureaucracy and stifling regulation. Academies emancipate professionals to think differently. A few weeks ago, little noticed, Mr Gove changed the rules governing the employment of teachers to make it easier for heads to get rid of bad ones. Across the education system, there is evidence of reassuring numbers of impressive school leaders who are using their recently acquired freedoms to do things very differently.

Take, for example, the Haberdashers’ Federation of Academies in London, which decided to lengthen the school day to increase the amount of time children spend in class. They now start at 8.30am rather than 9am, and close at 5.30 or 6pm. They have also changed the pace of the school year, after noticing that children learn better in the autumn and winter months when they don’t have the distractions of warm weather and exams. The federation’s schools open a week earlier than others, in the last week of August, to give themselves more teaching time before Christmas.

Not everything is working, of course. There are nagging doubts at Westminster about the separate Free Schools regime, under which groups of parents, charities and voluntary organisations can set up their own schools to introduce innovation into education. The numbers remains small, in part because the funding available is limited. For Mr Gove, these are experimental schools, the shock troops of reform, and there can only be a few to begin with. Yet his critics worry that, because they are more difficult to deliver than academies, they are not getting the same government attention. And among Tories there are plenty who point out that as long as Mr Gove continues to rule out allowing outside providers to make a profit by running successful schools more efficiently, a true revolution cannot take place.

The Education Secretary is due to re-emerge shortly, with a major speech in a few weeks on the next stage of his reforms. Away from our gaze, he has been considering how to deal with the remaining core of inadequate schools, and how to bolster further the curriculum to restore academic rigour. But he should do more. We need greater transparency about how good our teachers are and what results they produce. He must unpick the death-grip of European and equalities legislation that is crushing innovation in his department. Above all, he must entrench his reforms to ensure that they cannot be reversed by a future Labour administration. We have scarcely begun to notice, but there is a transformation under way in our schools that must be protected at all costs.