Why Education Is Important?

WHAT IS EDUCATION FOR? Speech by Michael Gove MP to the RSA 30 June 2009 INTRODUCTION It’s a pleasure to be here at the Royal Society for the Arts – I am grateful to you Matthew for the kind invitation and appreciate the trouble you’ve taken to provide me with a platform today. I am also appreciative of the work you have done with the RSA since you took over – under your leadership the Society has flourished as never before, and leads debate in social policy, in science policy, and on educational reform. And talking of leadership changes… It is just over two years to the day since Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister. Many of you I know will have chosen to mark the occasion quietly, in your own way with an appropriate private ceremony. And perhaps Matthew you, and your old boss Tony Blair, were among those of us reflecting on what might have been… And as well as marking the second anniversary of the Prime Minister’s accession, this month also marks the second anniversary of the demise of the old Department of Education and the birth of the Department for Children, Schools and Families. Now names themselves, especially names of Whitehall departments, are far less important than what goes on in their name – Titles, as Lord Mandelson could tell us, are far less important than the substance of policy. But the renaming of the old Department was no idle exercise in empty rebranding – it reflected a philosophical shift in how Government sees its role.

Under Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, schools have lost their principal purpose – and been saddled with a host of supplementary roles. As the flagship document of Ed’s first year in office – the Children’s Plan – indicated, schools are less places of teaching and learning and more community hubs from which a host of children’s services can be delivered. In that sense education has indeed been eclipsed – and the renaming of the Department is genuinely significant – we no longer have a single department of state charged