It is only a tad two-faced for senior Conservative MPs to be taking credit, in full public, about the fact that our Medway Academies have finally been granted the funding to build new buildings.
It was a Conservative Government which threatened the funding in the first place and which has caused head teachers, parents and pupils untold stress and heart ache for months.
The credit, if any, should go to the tireless head teachers, school staff and Academy Sponsors who have had to wait, on every baited breath, from that call from the Department for Education indicating that Michael Gove had saved them from the Tory axe. The credit should also go to all those cross-party campaigners who worked hard to represent the Academies.
As we can now see, the funding for the Medway Academies was never a slight of hand by the previous Labour Government.
It was always costed and totally fundable.
The threat to these Academies had always and only come from a Conservative Government which had quite clearly rushed through, on what now can be seen by the public, to be a monumental mistake of judgement. The fact that Michael Gove himself has had to apologise for a litany of errors and the Department for Education has had to publish half a dozen (at least) corrected versions of the BSF cuts list highlights the total ineptitude of this current administration.
The next step is to identify what went wrong in government.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, it has seen internal memo's showing that Mr Gove was repeatedly warned by top officials that the £55 billion Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme was a minefield which could not simply be abandoned at a stroke. He ignored the advice.
The general public can spot a mistake of this kind and identify its cause.
Everyone knows that Gove has managed this process so appallingly that a school-child with half his supposed IQ could have stepped in and got it right, after the first list of BSF cuts. Gove simply and carelessly rushed out lists of cuts to prove a political point, that Labour had made-up the funding for the Academies. The fibs that Labour had pledged money before the election that the government did not have, now stand totally hollow.
The announcement this week that our Medway Academies have secured funding is a welcome u-turn for sure, but this whole process highlights why Michael Gove, a former journalist, simply is not qualified to manage a major department of state.
The numerous errors point to one judgement. Michael Gove is simply not up to the job.
Local Tory MPs should be careful to take the credit for this process too quickly. The public, Academies and sponsors are under no illusion that the threat came from a Tory Government. The Academies and head teachers will remember the stress and hurt caused by the process. They will remember who gloated to celebrate and who apologised for the pain caused.
Lastly, they will remember the man who managed this process so poorly; one named Michael Gove.
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