Being away from home this week I’ve started on Shirley Williams’ biography because it’s the only one I have paperback (and so is easy to carry). Luckily, it’s brilliant.

During a several hour flight delay the story of her early life carried me away from a dull airport gate and into her riproaring childhood. From the outset Williams was adventurer, flinging herself into mischief whenever possible, and remaining unflummoxed even in the face of her evacuation to Minnesota when aged only 9 (accompanied solely by her 12 year old brother). Williams enjoyed the free-spirited nature of school life that she found in the US – no uniforms, and a feeling that a child’s social life was important.

Returning to England in 1943, she found school here quite different. She does talk somewhat positively of St. Paul’s Girls School, at least about its teaching:

“Academically, St. Paul’s was outstanding. It encouraged its pupils to engage in discussion with the teachers and with one another, not a common phenomenon in girls’ schools sixty years ago. The emphasis was on academic and artistic excellence. The school yielded nothing to conventional views about the limited capacity of girls to master science and mathematics.”

The strict discipline, however, was too much for Williams:

“I dreamed up ways of breaking school rules and shocking my teachers, not least to impress schoolfellows. I was good at climbing, so I shinned up the lead pipes that clung to the side of the science block to the third story. I recall staring into the window of the chemistry class, only to confront the appalled expression of the chemistry teacher. I must have seemed as much nightmare as reality.”

On another occasion she crept on the school stage and began grimacing behind the head who was making a speech, much amusing the other pupils.

So far Williams is the first Ed Sec whose biography talks of flagrant rule-breaking. Even those not enthusiastic about school (e.g. Hogg) at least felt order was important. I am excited to see whether  this has an impact on her later dealings at the DfE.

I’m currently finishing Quintin Hogg’s “The Door Wherein I Went” which started off horribly but actually got quite good. He’s funny. Much funnier than expected.

But my mind got a little distracted yesterday when a copy of Edward Short’s “I Knew My Place” arrived. Disappointingly, the blurb says the book is only about the first ten years of his life. Not particularly useful when you’re trying to assess someone’s time in political office.

Unperturbed I flicked open the book and glanced at the first thing I saw, which just so happened to be this:

It was fifteen minutes before a car helped Short and took the body of Eddie down to the village. About fifteen minutes after that Short was violently sick and then he cried and cried. He wrote:

Well…. do you?

Today is Michael Gove’s birthday. Huzzah!

To celebrate, here are some facts you might not know…

1. Michael Gove turns 46 today. This is young by Ed Sec standards. The average age on entry is 50.
2. The only other Ed Sec to turn 46 while in post is….. Margaret Thatcher.
3. Gove is currently the 7th longest-serving Education Secretary having recently overtaken Kenneth Baker.
4. He has another ~160 days before he steals 6th place (from Thatcher).
5. He is the first Ed Sec in 46 years to have previously been President of the Oxford Union. Four other Ed Secs have held that role (Quintin Hogg, Michael Stewart, Edward Boyle & Anthony Crosland).
6. He is the second Education Secretary to be born in Edinburgh. The first was Florence Horsbrugh, born in 1889 (79 years before Gove).
7. He is the only Ed Sec known to have been raised from birth by adoptive parents.
8. The most common degree subject for an Ed Sec is History. Second is Politics. Gove is unique in having studied English.
9. He shares his birthday week with past-Ed Secs Anthony Crosland and Edward Boyle (both also past-Ox Union Presidents)
10. Gove has said he shall never stand as leader of the Conservative Party.

In 1957 Quintin Hogg reluctantly took on the role of Education Minister. He did not want it.

Hogg nevertheless says he threw himself into the role. One major problem was a pressing need for more school buildings due to high birthrates and the raising of the school leaving age. The situation facing Hogg sounds remarkably like the one facing Gove when he entered office in 2010.

Hogg could have cancelled the projects, just like Gove. But he took another path. Instead he found ways to link schools with similar problems – e.g. all schools with subsidence issues worked together on one design. He did so not by telling them they had to work together, but by making them think it was their idea and giving lots of public credit for it.

Perhaps, in 2010, if Gove had instead asked local authorities to convene the schools together and collectively they had prioritised building needs, the government could still have only given out monies now allocated for Priority Schools but it would have been based on the ideas of what local people needed, and might have encouraged co-operation that would reduce cost. It would also have been a more humane approach to deciding which young people would be stuck in squalor, than simply scrubbing names off a list inside a Westminster Ivory Tower.