Education Secretary Michael Gove outlines education reforms

Education Secretary Michael Gove outlines education reforms; - Landmark work by Professor Michael Barber for McKinsey, backed up by the research of Fenton Whelan, has shown that teacher quality is critical - the highest performing education nations have the best qualified teachers. And research again from the OECD underlines that rigorous external assessment - proper testing you can trust - helps lever up standards. And these lessons are being applied with vigour and rigour in other nations. In America, President Obama is pressing ahead with radical school reform to close the gap between rich and poor. And he’s implementing all three policies to generate lasting improvement. He is promoting greater autonomy by providing cash and other incentives to encourage more charter schools - the equivalent of our free schools and academies. He has offered extra support to programmes designed to attract more great people into teaching and leadership. And he has encouraged states and school districts to provide greater accountability through improved testing and assessment. In other ambitious countries, the drive for greater autonomy is generating great performance. In Canada, and specifically in Alberta, schools have also been liberated, given the autonomy enjoyed by charter schools in the US. Head teachers control their own budgets, set their own ethos and shape their own environments. In Calgary and Edmonton, a diverse range of autonomous schools offer professionals freedom and parents choice. And the result? Alberta now has the best performing state schools of any English-speaking region. In Sweden, the old bureaucratic monopoly that saw all state schools run by local government was ended and the system opened up to allow new, non-selective, state schools to be set up by a range of providers. It has allowed greater diversity, increased parental choice and has seen results improve – with results improving fastest of all in the areas where school...