But you would be wrong.

Because think about it.

What has Gove achieved today?

He has got large numbers of people writing the word yacht. And that means finding out how to spell the pesky word yacht.

We now have a nation freshly educated in where that pesky t goes, not to mention the irritating h. It’s mass education to raise our spelling levels.

So well done, Mr. Gove. I salute you.

Tomorrow? I think he’ll be announcing plans for a Committee to Definitely Agree An Acceptable Broccoli Recipe.

* Or torpedoed. Or wrecked. Or left high and dry. Pick your nautical metaphor. But try to stick to the sea, unlike PoliticsHome who went for “shot down”. Boat planes appear to have been on their mind.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Observer, Featherstone said it was vital the coalition delivered on its family-friendly rhetoric … In a forthright attack on some of the advisers shaping government policy, she criticised the role of Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist tasked with reporting to the prime minister on how to cut regulation on business. Beecroft is understood to have recommended a U-turn on government policies on shared parental leave and flexible working.

The proposals, outlined in a white paper, would allow couples greater freedom to co-ordinate maternity and paternity leave. A separate proposal would make it easier to request flexible working hours.

Featherstone told the Observer that Beecroft’s recommendation that the moves should be shelved was not acceptable and would be “swept away”. She also made her feelings clear over a recent “blue sky” proposal from Steve Hilton, the prime minister’s director of strategy, suggesting that the government could scrap maternity pay altogether. Featherstone said: “Well, I might talk about scrapping Steve Hilton.”

As the Telegraph added:

The Prime Minister is now facing a split in Cabinet over the future of the policies.

Along with Mr Hilton, George Osborne and Eric Pickles are understood to be in favour of a roll back while Nick Clegg, Theresa May, Oliver Letwin and Michael Gove fear it could harm attempts to appeal to women voters.

It’s a bit of an old-fashioned oddity (to put it politely) to talk about the electoral impact of family friendly policies only in terms of female voters. Rumour has it that families contain men too and parenting can involve males. But it does also reflect the way the attention of several (male) Conservative and Lib Dem Cabinet members to these issues followed them looking through political polling a few months ago showing the different ways men and women view the government.

Sticking to the government’s proposals on maternity leave is particularly important because, as Rob Blackie wrote earlier this year, there is even a case to argue that they are our most popular policy since the coalition was formed.

As for what Lynne Featherstone said about Steve Hilton, if think think that was acerbic, you should hear what plenty of Liberal Democrats in Whitehall say about him in private, and they are not exactly out of tune with some in Conservative Party ranks…

Yet there was a significant section about how Liberal Democrat ministers act and his own role:

There are 18 Liberal Democrats who don’t have the luxuries that I do.

They can’t just sound off if they don’t like government policy or trot through the no lobby on occasions – rare occasions – to demonstrate their disagreement.

They are our ministers.

And while I’m parading my conscience around the TV studios saying the right things, they are busy in their departments doing the right things.

On those very, very rare occasions when Michael Gove says or does something stupid or wrong, Sarah Teather doesn’t come out and slag him off. Instead she fixes it.

Free schools for example!

When the Tories showed hesitancy about committing to true and fair banking reforms, Vince Cable laid on the pressure and forced that commitment.

And when George Osborne flew the kite of cutting income tax for the wealthy, Danny Alexander cut the string, and stopped him.

[Gove] suggested parents enlist to help out stricken schools and give children something constructive to do, adding that it would save working parents a fortune. But union leaders in Dorset slammed the proposal, claiming it lacked common sense and would cause a “safeguarding nightmare”. Phil Jacques, Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) secretary for Bournemouth, Poole and Dorset, claimed implementing the plan would be a “licence for paedophiles”.

“Teachers and other adults working in schools have to have a Criminal Records Bureau check, to avoid the risk,” he said. “That’s something that takes time. I’m sure any risk would be very low, but do we want to take that risk?” [Bournemouth Echo]

A Warrington MP is ready to defy David Cameron by voting to scrap the first-past-the- post voting system – potentially making him the only Conservative to do so.

David Mowat said he was considering backing a switch to the “alternative vote” (AV) for Westminster elections in the nationwide referendum to be staged on May 5.

The Warrington South MP described himself as an “agnostic” on the issue, but also stated his belief that first-past-the-post favours Labour, particularly in seats such as his own…

No other Conservative MP has come forward to hint at voting “Yes”, although two Cabinet ministers – Michael Gove and Andrew Lansley – are thought to be sympathetic.

The £180m being spent on the new scheme compares to the £560m cost of the EMA. At first glance, that is a large cut. But if you view the key objective for the funds to be helping more people to take part in post-16 education, then the picture looks very different. That’s because several different studies of EMA concludes that the vast majority of its funds went to people who would have been in post-16 education anyway.

The IFS, for example, concluded in December that,

The Government argues that the impact generated by the EMA does not justify the £560 million spent on this policy in England. Underpinning this argument is a finding from some qualitative research. One of the questions asked those who were in receipt of EMA what they would do in its absence: only 12% reported that they would not be in education. The Government infers from this that the EMA policy carries a ‘deadweight’ of 88%, i.e. 88 out of every 100 students receiving EMA would still have been in education if EMA did not exist and are therefore being paid to do something they would have done anyway. The estimates from the IFS research reports above imply a level of deadweight that is consistent with this: 65 out of every 69 individuals aged 16 who are eligible for the EMA would have stayed in education without the payment.

So on those figures, only between £32m (IFS research) and £67m (government survey) of the £560m spent on EMA actually went to people who otherwise would not have been in education. With the new scheme having a budget of £180m, its does not have to be targeted particularly well to be able to afford to reach all of those people – and more.

Will it? For the 12,000 students who are amongst those in the greatest need, such as pupils in care, care leavers and the severely disabled, the new scheme will certainly be marginally better as it will give them slightly more money each year and, as they look to be clearly defined categories, the money should get to the right people.

For other students, the new scheme involves giving colleges and schools discretionary powers to make grants, so it is only when we see how those powers are used that the question can be answered for sure. But they would have to use those powers remarkably badly not to manage to at least match EMA’s record at getting money to those who would otherwise not be in education.

Or to put it at the simplest, £180m would have to be spent very badly indeed not to get at least even the higher figure of £67m into the right hands.

That said, the substance of the issue is an important one and the noises coming out of government over the weekend were promising:

The Government is to spend £180m to help children from poor families stay in education until the age of 18, ministers will announce next week.

The fund will soften the blow from the Coalition’s controversial decision to abolish Educational Maintenance Allowances (EMAs), which are worth up to £30 a week for 16 to 18-year-olds, depending on their family’s income.

The figure is more generous than expected and follows a last-minute intervention by Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister. Only £75m was earmarked for the replacement scheme in last autumn’s spending review. That was raised to £111m after pressure from the Liberal Democrats.

In negotiations alongside talks on the Budget, Mr Clegg squeezed a further £70m out of the Treasury. The deal was approved by David Cameron, the Chancellor George Osborne and the Education Secretary Michael Gove.

The majority of the new budget will be distributed to colleges to award, at their discretion, to students from less privileged backgrounds. A smaller proportion will be earmarked for automatic payments to students with special needs such as the disabled. Mr Clegg also won a pledge that the amount of money being spent would be reviewed, which could boost the fund in 2012-13. (The Independent)

Michael Gove: … In Liberal Democrat-controlled Hull, any student in receipt of education maintenance allowance also receives a travel grant to cope with the full cost—

Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab): They won’t now.

Michael Gove: I suspect they won’t if a Labour council takes power, but if people are wise enough to vote Liberal Democrat at the next local election in Hull—[Hon. Members: “Oh.”]—or for the Conservatives in any seat where we are well placed to defeat Labour, they will have a council that is fulfilling its statutory duty.

In school systems where there have been significant improvements in performance, McKinsey found that these were often achieved in six years or less from the start of the changes. In other words it is possible for a government to bring about improvements in time for the public to see the benefits before the next election. However, continuity amongst key educational officials (including politicians) is frequently beneficial, with improving systems usually having their educational leaders in place for long periods of time.

Many of those improvements were, according to the McKinsey analysis, brought about without significant changes in the structure of education systems or in the resources put in.

Although both these structural and resourcing factors are important, “we find that the vast majority of interventions made by the improving systems in our sample are ‘process’ in nature … [i.e.] modifying curriculum and improving the way that teachers instruct and principals lead”.

However, what works best depends on what stage of improvement the education system is – going from poor to ok and going from ok to good often required different policies, with the resulting warning that, “systems cannot continue to improve by simply doing more of what brought them past success”.

In particular, as schools get better the importance of local autonomy increases in the McKinsey analysis:

These systems achieve improvement by the center increasing the responsibilities and flexibilities of  schools and teachers to shape instructional practice – one-third of the systems in the ‘good to great’ journey and just less than two-thirds of the systems in the ‘great to excellent’ journey decentralize pedagogical  rights to the middle layer (e.g. districts) or schools. However, in parallel, the center mitigates the risk of these freedoms resulting in wide and uncontrolled performance variations across schools by establishing mechanisms that make teachers responsible to each other as professionals for both their own performance and that of their colleagues. For example, these systems establish teacher career paths whereby higher skill teachers increasingly take on responsibility for supporting their juniors to achieve instructional excellence first within the school, then across the system. These systems also establish collaborative practices between teachers within and across schools that emphasize making practice public – such as weekly lesson-planning for all teachers in the same subject, required lesson observations, and joint-teaching – that serve to perpetuate and further develop the established pedagogy.

The emphasis on process in the McKinsey analysis, placing more weight on it than on structure and resourcing, is a mirror image of current debates about the school system in the UK where all three factors are much discussed, but it is structure (e.g. free schools) and resourcing (e.g. pupil premium) which are getting the bulk of attention whilst process issues, such as Michael Gove’s views on the curriculum, get much less attention.

You can read a detailed summary of the report here.

You’re in the news today saying that the “novelty” of Nick Clegg will wear off when his policies come under further scrutiny.

Guess you must have missed last night’s TV debate then, with the two occasions when David Cameron directly put Liberal Democrat policies under scrutiny and said they wouldn’t work.

Only thing is, on both occasions – how to fund taking millions out of income tax and how to have a regionally based immigration system – Nick Clegg straight away responded with a detailed answer covering all of Cameron’s points.

And in both cases that response silenced Cameron on the point – he picked no holes in the explanations.

So if that’s what happens when Lib Dem policies come under scrutiny, I’m not sure it’ll have the effect you are quite hoping for.

Yours,

Mark