Michael Gove

Profile

Michael Andrew Gove (born 26 August 1967) is a Conservative politician, journalist and author in the United Kingdom. He has been Secretary of State for Education since 12 May 2010, and was formerly Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Surrey Heath since 2005.

Gove was born in Edinburgh. At four months old, he was adopted by a Labour-supporting family in Aberdeen, where he was brought up.[2] His adoptive father ran a fish processing business. His mother worked as a lab assistant at the University of Aberdeen and with deaf children for Grampian Regional Council.

He was educated in Aberdeen at state, and private schools, having won a scholarship to Robert Gordon’s College. He later studied English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University (1985–1988) where he served as President of the Oxford Union, returning in 1993 to serve as Chief Adjudicator at the World Universities Debating Championship. Gove was initially a Labour supporter and activist, and considered a career in the church before he became a journalist

Gove joined the Conservative Party at university and was secretary of Aberdeen South Young Conservatives. He has helped write speeches for various cabinet and shadow cabinet ministers, including Peter Lilley and Michael Howard. He applied for a job at the Conservative Research Department, but was told he was “insufficiently political” and “insufficiently Conservative”, so he turned to journalism.

Gove is seen as part of an influential set of young up-and-coming Tories, sometimes disparagingly referred to as the ‘Notting Hill Set’, which includes David Cameron, George Osborne, Edward Vaizey, Nicholas Boles and Rachel Whetstone. They are perceived as modernisers in social issues and humanitarian interventionist in foreign policy. Michael Portillo has predicted that Gove will one day lead the Conservative party. When Cameron was elected leader in December 2005, he appointed Gove the housing spokesman shadowing the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

On 2 July 2007, Gove was promoted to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families (a new department set up by the Prime Minister Gordon Brown) shadowing Ed Balls, a key supporter of Brown.

Gove is the current Secretary of State for Education. Following his appointment in May 2010, he rebranded his department , announced plans to convert schools rated as ‘outstanding’ by Ofsted into academies ,and heavily cut the previous Government’s school building program . He was forced to apologise, however, when the list of terminated school building projects released by him was found to be inaccurate .

In July 2010 Gove said children’s chances of doing well at school were still too closely tied to social class, despite billions spent by Labour attempting to break the link. He quoted research showing that toddlers from wealthy backgrounds with poor cognitive ability go on to outperform brighter children born into deprived homes by the age of six. Addressing the Commons Education Select Committee, Mr Gove said the current gulf between rich and poor pupils widened throughout primary and secondary school. He said “In effect, rich thick kids do better than poor clever children when they arrive at school [and] the situation as they go through gets worse,”.

Source: Wikipedia

Further Information:

• Guardian Summary
• BBC Summary