Can Gove’s schools revolution live up to expectations?

If the Tories are to be believed I am at the birth of a schools revolution. It’s a gathering in the basement of the Royal Commonwealth Society in Whitehall.

About 200 folk from around the country who would like to set up one of Michael Gove’s Swedish-style flat-pack schools have gathered.

What strikes you is the very different motivations.

There’s some anti-LEA zeal, a lot of resistance to rationalisation into “titan” 1,500+ schools and a lot of demand simply for local schools – whether it’s a rural town that sends all its kids away to other parts of the county or parents in a London borough whose primary schools spray children far and wide to 45 different secondaries and who feel that there simply isn’t enough secondary state provision in their area.

It has echoes of the anger when smaller local hospitals closed under rationalisation schemes. Some want the new school to happen and want nothing whatsoever to do with running a school. Some want to run the school themselves.

Michael Gove is promising them that a schools department under him would stop the “computer says no” sullen obstructive approach he says would-be new providers get at the moment.

But he would have to say “no” to some people, as a questioner just suggested. How would he decide?

He says there’s enough money left in the schools capital budget to allow 220,000 new places – that could mean 200-300 or so new schools.

Even if the money really is still there in the kitty, this revolution will be tricky to say the least and if there’s as as much enthusiasm out there as the Tories say, Mr Gove could end up having to say “no” to a lot of campaigns.