I saw a recent speech of his, and found him fairly scary, as he seemed quite zealous, talking about a burning desire to transform Britain, and so on. No.
I think that is at the heart of the problem.
He is dogmatic and a zealot - he doesn't really seem to understand pragmatism nor the need to take advice (hence his views on 'experts').
So at education he effectively steamrolled the profession into the most significant changes in decades, but without the support of either the teaching profession, nor educational experts. His endless tinkering at at whim has just been exhausting, particularly when you need to gradually bring in changes to the curriculum over years, or you end up with kids lurching from the 'old world' to the 'new world' but without appropriate preparation (not their fault).
Sadly I've got kids who are the guinea pigs for the Gove revolution, and it ain't pretty. A couple of years ago my eldest was making decisions about GCSE options and the school, quite reasonably, wanted to ensure we had the most up to date information. So with so many changes they delayed sending out the info until 5 days before the parents' choices meeting. At the meeting the teachers announced that in the last 5 days there had been 3 major changes in the proposed curriculum, including one that very morning. The teachers were very professional, but clearly exasperated, wanting the best for the kids, but dealing with constantly moving goal-posts.
And a week later one of the main changes was then scrapped.
One of the big changes I think is absolute non-sense is getting rid of AS levels - effectively forcing kids to sit all their A-level exam (that count) at the end of the whole 2 year course. Why?!? It is nonsense and certainly doesn't prepare them for University where (at most) exams are at the end of each year, indeed many universities examine a module at the end of that semester.
