Any Guardian article that mentions Michael Gove is bound to be followed by an avalanche of comment--nearly all of it hysterical abuse. I got a taste of it myself when I wrote a Centre for Policy Studies report which recommended that School Sports Partnerships be disbanded: the hate-filled e-mails I got were barely literate. Even though Cameron asked Gove to reconsider his decision to follow our recommendation, Gove stood firm. With this in mind, I trust that my reservations about the Academy programme can be understood. Oliver Lewis is not alone in assuming that this measure is a game-changer that will rid our schools from the disfiguring ideology of the left and the unions. Alas, all that is happening is that power is being transferred from county hall to the DfE. This is a seriously retrograde step. As educational publishers, we work with local authorities all the time, and many of their employees do outstanding work. I would go so far as to say that we wouldn't have a business but for the fact that many LA advisers have taken the trouble to look seriously at what we offer, and get schools to see how well our programme works. By contrast, the DfE has gone out of their way to promote our competition. They have done so despite the fact that I have met with Gove and Gibb on numerous occasions, and Gove has publicly applauded our work. Therein lies the problem: it is no secret that Gove and his department do not get along. Our application to start a free school in Oldham was in tune with Gove's educational philosophy, but his mandarins rejected it. The case against academies is not entirely fanciful. The teachers I know who have worked in one are not impressed. Many of them are management- and target-driven: virtual exam-factories. They have bloated senior management teams consisting mainly of young teachers with Masters and PhDs in education--people who have been fast-tracked up the greasy pole after a very minimal apprenticeship at the chalk face. Of course, there are community schools that are much the same, and some academies (such as the above-cited Harris academies) which do have a firm understanding of what education should be about. The DfE is obsessed with management structures, and fairly agnostic when it comes to educational philosophy. They tend to go along cheerfully with the latest fashions; now, huge empires are being built on the backs of our hapless pupils with 'special educational needs'. About one in five children are so designated. It would seem that no one at the DfE has ever stopped to ask what is wrong with a system which fails 20% of our children.