From Groves To Gove

Ah, leisure, the basis of culture. But don't try telling that to Michael Gove, whose vanity institutions are to close only on Bank Holidays and for a week at Christmas.

Allegedly, this is for academic reasons. But commercial schools do far better with middle-ability pupils, and their holidays are actually longer. However, their days are not so short. They are more like the ones remembered by those of us who went to state schools in the last century. But then, many commercial schools were state schools until well into the last century.

The short day and the long holidays long ago became the only things that made working with teenagers tolerable for an awful lot of people. Without those, they just wouldn't do it. Least of all now that they are being required to pay more money in order to receive a lower pension at a later age.

Anyway, some of these places, going back to the Blair years, already have no outdoor spaces on the grounds that you are there to work, and if you don't need a playing field at a factory or an office block, then you don't need one at a school, either. So this latest development comes as no surprise.

Mercifully, there are going to be so few "free" schools, and so very few that are not bailed out private schools with longer holidays than in the state sector, that is hardly going to matter.

Is it?