On the edge of his seat

Michael Gove's plans for education don't allow for a moment's pause

If Andrew Lansley had followed the same approach - simply picking up the last PM but one's NHS agenda and running with it - he would have saved himself a lot of trouble."We know there is a lot of interest out there," Bremby said."We're going to try to make this as transparent as we can," Bremby said."The current project ... would import coal from Wyoming, deliver electricity to Colorado and rely upon Kansas air and water for decades," he said.Bremby will conduct public hearings in Overland Park, Salina and Garden City before making a final ruling on Sunflower. He might not finish before installation of a new Kansas governor in January. The decision might fall to the next KDHE secretary. Regardless of party or philosophy, the case will be a magnet to the person in the hot seat at Curtis Office Building."There will be 200 megawatts allotted for Kansas. It's going to effect 500,000 people in Kansas," she said.Gove begins by rattling off his latest plans. This week, he will announce that 88 'bad schools' are to be taken over and placed under new management. This is the largest number of failing schools ever turned into academies in a single year.For all the drama he's endured as secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment about planning for expansion of a coal-fired power plant in that southwest Kansas town, his office might as well have been inside one of the old 3,000-degree furnaces Sunflower Electric Power Corp. relies upon to generate electricity at the facility.When I walk into his office on the seventh floor of the Department for Education, Michael Gove is sitting behind his desk with his jacket off. He is hunched over, writing a note on House of Commons letterhead. His left arm is pushed right out across the desk and the lines on his forehead are showing as he rereads what he's put down so far. Even as a civil servant and I advance towards him, Gove's concentration does not break. Eventually, the civil servant asks loudly, 'Have you met the Secretary of State before?'Tri-State spokesman Jim Van Someren said the Colorado cooperative's board of directors had made no final commitment to the Kansas project. The bond rating firm Fitch Ratings reported in May regulatory and environmental push back on Holcomb meant "Tri-State has revised its power supply plan and pushed the planned construction of a single Holcomb unit beyond its original 2013 start date to 2016 at the earliest."'The important thing to do, ' he argues, 'is to strike a balance between maintaining the momentum required to go forward but also acknowledging that when you do embrace reforms, no one is going to get everything right at the beginning.'Hertel said KDHE had 18 months to issue a final decision. That deadline could send the outcome to December 2011. If approved, 48 months to 52 months would be required for construction, which could place the opening in 2016. She said Sunflower's demand for electricity would grow in 2019 with expiration of a power purchase contract with Jeffrey Energy Center northwest St. Marys.The process went sideways when Kansas Attorney General Paul Morrison issued a legal opinion declaring Bremby had authority to deny a permit if the project was deemed a threat to people or the environment. Less than one month later, Bremby rejected the permit. He said the rise in carbon dioxide emissions was an unacceptable risk.Stephanie Cole, who works with the Sierra Club in Kansas, said the tide was pulling against development of coal-fired plants in the United States. No single coal plant broke ground in 2009, she said. Twenty-nine projects were shelved. Developers voluntarily walked away from projects, she said, citing financial risks to ratepayers, diminished demand for electricity and the uncertain regulatory future.On the walls of Gove's office is a map of Scotland, a reminder of his roots and of devolution - the Education Secretary's writ doesn't run north of the border, but however much of an optimist he is, he can't summon much hope of a Conservative revival in Scotland. 'It's not heartening at the moment because one of the striking things - and I suppose this is a measure of it - even though the erosion in the Conservative vote this time round was less than the erosion of the Liberal Democrat vote or the Labour vote, it was still eroding. More than that, we did particularly badly where there was a straightforward Labour/Conservative battle.' Asked what might revive the Scottish Tories, he answers, with a rare note of melancholy in his voice: 'I don't think there is any single thing that can be done.'Gove's decision to sprint out of the blocks means that he has clipped a fair few hurdles along the way. He has had decisions overturned by judges and been repeatedly summoned to the House of Commons to explain himself by the Speaker. But he is unapologetic: 'Anyone who is in any way admirable has made mistakes and has learned from them.'Gove is also planning to announce that, from now on , any schoo l where ha l f the pupils are not getting five GCSEs graded A to C, including English and Maths, is failing and will be earmarked for takeover; the line has previously been at 35 per cent. 'You've got to lift the bar, you've got to raise it up, ' he says, with such force that he almost tips off his chair, 'because otherwise - if we continue to make excuses for under-performance - we will find that all the children whom it's my job to secure a better future for are falling further and further behind.'As a civil servant frantically tries to wind the interview up, I ask Gove what grade he would give himself. He ducks the question by saying that he'll have to be 'externally assessed'. This he will be, by millions of parents. If - and only if - they stop feeling that it is a battle to get their child into a good school, we will know that Gove has succeeded.There are planes flying now which are manifestly airworthy but that doesn't mean that you can't learn from advances in aerodynamics and in fuel efficiency to reform them and that a line down which you went in the past can't be improved.'Warming to his theme, he launches into a defence of one of the Cameron government's favourite devices, the U-turn. 'As you implement things, do you need to change and improve the model as it applies on the ground? Absolutely. Anyone who is developing a sophisticated product would do so.What Gove is doing is not new. He has just taken the Blair education agenda and placed rocket boosters under it.

As a civil servant frantically tries to wind the interview up, I ask Gove what grade he would give himself. He ducks the question by saying that he'll have to be 'externally assessed'. This he will be, by millions of parents. If - and only if - they stop feeling that it is a battle to get their child into a good school, we will know that Gove has succeeded.

Author: FORSYTH, JAMES