For someone who has very little interest and even less knowledge about the world of football, I was (very) mildly concerned by the announcement of a European Super League. My drive to work so far this week has been narrated by various people on Radio 4, all spouting forth about sporting behaviour, equality, legacy, merit and whatnot.
At best, I understand that football is a sport dominated by boys who run about a bit and make a massive drama over falling down. And get paid insane amounts of money. I understand the rules of the game. I even understand the offside rule.
What I don’t understand is why your friend and mine, education secretary Gavin Williamson, spent 11 minutes of a 16-minute interview on Good Morning Britain talking about it. And there was me thinking the poor chap was in charge of education.
The European Super League? Gavin Williamson’s game plan
Eleven minutes of play, during which he was repeatedly asked what the government was actually going to do to stop the European Super League. To which he basically answered that the government would do everything it could. Yes, but what is that?
And so we entered yet another spiralling, time-wasting dance about the main issue, without ever committing to anything.
If Gavin had a game plan for this interview, it probably looked like this:
- Kick off with talking about the Europan Super League for a big chunk of time. Say it is a bad thing but don’t say how the government is going to stop it (because you haven’t decided yet).
- Promote apprenticeships and say that’s why you came on the telly. Get everyone on side by saying you support creative arts apprenticeships, because telly is important to the football industry (smooth link).
- Dodge the tricky challenge about having commented on discipline in schools by repeating several times that mobile phones are bad and that they should never be used in the classroom.
- Defend yourself when asked if everything Alan Duncan said about you in his diaries is true, and try to look really, really calm and smile some more.
A twilight world, where football and education are the same
By now I have found myself in a twilight world where football and education are one and the same, and GW appears to be the spokesperson for sport. It delights me that he is equally vague on both subjects.
But, as a result of this hideous mutant mash-up, I am now wondering if the main sticking points of the proposed Super League could be applied to education. Maybe there is something to be learned from the principles of what the super-rich, super-greedy, super-arrogant football bosses are trying to achieve.
- They want a select group of wealthy, top-performing clubs to ensure high outcomes.
- They want to remove the possibility of failure, so the league stays stable and looks good.
- They want to prevent other lesser clubs from joining them, which could affect their profile.
Now far be it from me to offer direct examples of where this has happened in education (OK: academies, league tables, selective schools) but superficially it could sound rather uncomfortable. Which might be why Gavin felt the need to appear so readily on breakfast TV, in order to distance himself from his educational legacy.
At the end of the day - and it’s been a long day - it’s the only plausible explanation that I can see. Unless, of course, he just lost the coin toss that morning.
And then, of course, just when we thought it was all over for the beautiful game, it really was. The European Super League disbanded: an own goal. Much like your Brain Gyms, your iPads, your four-part lessons and the world’s biggest oxymoron, your verbal-feedback stamps.
If there is one thing we can take away from the events of this week, it’s that education is not alone in being dealt a game-changer overnight. It makes you as sick as a parrot.
Zoë Crockford is an art teacher at a secondary school in Bournemouth
