On Tuesday Michael Gove delivered a speech at a CentreForum meeting called "Making opportunity more equal: closing the achievement gap in our schools" The full text is available from the CentreForum website.

It picked up a fair amount of press interest  including the BBC ("Tories attack 'opportunity block'), The Mail ('Failing schools to be taken out of council control, Tories pledge') and The Telegraph ("Tories to end town hall grip on failing schools") which also made it the subject of one of its leaders ("Michael Gove's idea to free our failing schools")

Gove's analysis of the growing gap between the advantaged and disadvantaged echoes much of CentreForum's work.  What's more, he shows that schools amplify those differences throughout a pupil's school career. Gove's prescription is simple. Academies have worked for a simple reason.

"...who has presided over this failure – who should take responsibility for this record of under achievement and deepening inequality? The buck has to stop with the local authorities in whose areas failure has been concentrated."

Unfortunately, Gove gives few details of local authority failings and instead concentrates on what successful academies have done:

"[Academies are] Free to choose and shape their own curriculum. Free to hire and reward their own staff in their own way. Free to co-operate and collaborate with who they wanted, in the private and public sector, in the way they wanted. Free to exclude disruptive pupils and set their own discipline policies... And the bureaucracy from which they were liberated was – in Lewisham, or in Hackney, or in Manchester, - the Labour-run bureaucracy which had... tolerated, entrenched failure for years."

The Liberal Democrat front bench is grappling with the same issues. Nick Clegg's much plugged pupil premium is one way of addressing the same problem.  However, to pursue a similar line to Gove, Nick Clegg and his team will have to persuade their Lib Dem councillor colleagues many of whom run LEAs now.

Many of those councillors feel misunderstood in this debate.  They feel the notion that they are stifling innovation is misplaced when central government allows them few opportunities to experiment in ways they would like.

Those advancing the cause of school innovation need to show they understand these nuances in order to build a convincing critique of Local Education Authorities.

Also in the news:

The BBC publishes the first "First 100 days" article assessing Clegg's leadership.