‘I have been excited and flattered by the extent of interest and enthusiasm’ said Michael Gove talking about his new Free Schools plan, where members of the public have the power to start their own schools. He went onto say that the number of free schools being set up at the start of the next academic year was ‘well in excess of my hopes’. 16 free schools are being set up over the next year. 16. Mr Gove, with respect, there’s been about as much ‘interest and enthusiasm’ as you’d get from a middle aged man from Newcastle seeing an advert for the release of High School Musical 4. Instead of spending the last 4 months twiddling his thumbs waiting for a morsel of interest in his ‘flagship’ free schools programme why didn’t Mr Gove actually do his job and improve the education of our children rather than push through this ridiculous idea of some bloke down the road opening up his own school. Moreover these schools will pop up in affluent areas, run by a couple of pushy parents with too much time on their hands and will result in money being drained from normal schools by this ideologically driven nonsense. But the worst bit is that no one really cares. Well 16 people do.


This whole free schools business is a lot like David Cameron’s ‘big society’ it’s a lovely little idea, people skipping around, opening up youth centres for gangs, hostels for the homeless and perhaps a library or two; all of course, out of the goodness of their hearts with not a dime for their troubles. Now of course, it would be wonderful if all this were to happen, but is this in anyway realistic? Popping down to do some free work at the local post office. I may sound cynical or lazy, but the fact is this, people don’t work for free, and only a small minority have the time or the willpower to spend hours sorting post for nothing other than self-satisfaction. I have huge respect for those who do, and the rest of us should learn from them, but I highly doubt the ‘big society’ will the phenomenon of the decade that Dave is hoping it will be. I think this is best summed up in the words of Tim Canterbury from ‘The Office’:

‘It's a title someone's given you to get you to do something they don't want to do for free - it's like making the div kid at school milk monitor’