Following the education whirlwind created by Michael Gove, the new Education Secretary, the dust is starting to settle and more detail is emerging. Fiona Leney reports.

Earlier this summer, Parliament rushed through the Academies Bill, paving the way for a radical overhaul of the school system, in time for the start of the summer break. A new wave of academy schools, free from local-authority control, is now in place, and the way is open for parents, charities and other organisations to set up controversial Swedish-style ‘free schools’ – schools set up by parents’ groups, teachers and charities at taxpayers’ expense.

The Education Secretary has even said he would be prepared to look at proposals for atheist schools as a response to faith schools under the ‘free schools’ theme. This follows comments from Professor Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, that he approved of the idea of setting up a “free-thinking” school.

The pace of the Government’s education overhaul has so far been as speedy as it promised, but there are signs of unease within the coalition that these changes could disadvantage poorer pupils or ride roughshod over parental choice. In the Academies Bill vote, six Liberal Democrat MPs backed an amendment calling for more consultation with parents.

There are also accusations from teaching unions and the Labour Party that the bill could lead to a two-tier education system and damage comprehensive schooling, and it is undeniable that what, under Labour, was a scheme to draw in private investment to regenerate or create schools in deprived areas has had a radical makeover.

Clearly, high-achieving schools, whether comprehensive or selective, are keen to reap the benefits of less bureaucratic interference and more cash by becoming academies. But how struggling schools, or those with disadvantaged pupils, reap the benefits of the latest changes, especially in a climate of budget cuts, is less clear.

Not to be accused of increasing the gap between rich and poor pupils, however, Mr Gove has also announced that, from September 2011, schools will be given a cash incentive for every underprivileged child they teach, as part of a shake-up of schools funding. The payments, which will come from outside the budget for schools, are intended to stop the middle classes dominating the best schools and correct the “significant underachievement” of disadvantaged pupils compared with their peers.

This is intended to give schools whose main source of students is middle-class – and, therefore, nominally higher-achieving – children an incentive to attract those from disadvantaged families. As critics point out, the success of the scheme in boosting the achievement of disadvantaged children will depend heavily on ringfencing the money so that it can only be spent on projects directly benefiting those students.

Mr Gove also had to weather a few storms in his early weeks. First, there was the school buildings project furore – where his office put out a list of school building projects which were to be cancelled – which turned out to be inaccurate. And at the end of July, Oxford and Cambridge rode unexpectedly to the rescue of A levels, with the Director of Admissions at Cambridge writing to Mr Gove to express concern over comments he had made about replacing the exam.

Earlier in the month, Mr Gove had said A levels should be modified to make them academically tougher and to bring back to the classrooms “the art of deep thought.” He is understood to have hoped universities would support his drive to move from the modular A-level system to a programme based on Cambridge University's own Pre-U exams.

But in the letter, Dr Geoff Parks, Director of Admissions at Cambridge, said Mr Gove's comments on A-level reform have met with “a degree of anxiety” among admissions tutors. He wrote: “We are worried … that, if AS level disappears, we will lose many of the gains in terms of fair admissions and widening participation that we have made in the last decade.”

Dr Parks said the AS level grades achieved by pupils in their final year of school were a more accurate measure of pupils’ future performance at university than other qualifications, such as GCSEs or aptitude tests. He accepted that some admissions tutors were worried by the low academic content of certain A-levels, but said AS results had become an integral part of the application process.

In the October 2010 issue of Smart Move Plus, we’ll be examining the new initiative on ‘fair banding’ admissions schemes, which may offer relocating parents a better chance of getting their children into the schools of their choice.