Playing Gove Bingo!

In our household we have, as the recent educational events unfolded, developed a new game to accompany the televised news: “Gove bingo!”

This fantastic game incorporates all the things that are required in the new Ofsted framework: literacy skills, teamwork and creativity.

When the secretary of state for the dark arts (and education), Michael Gove, makes his latest televised pronouncement, we divide into two teams.

Team one will look for the inevitable politician’s soundbite – for example words such as “rigour”, “challenge”, “aspiration”.

Team two may choose to await the unsurprising “world class, Baccalaureate” or “achievement”.

You may, if unlucky, get all three hackneyed words in one sentence, “rigorous aspirational challenge and achievement of a world class Baccalaureate” – in which case “bingo” is called and the winning team is allowed free abuse of the television, thereby drowning out the political rhetoric of a man who has presided over the biggest educational fiasco in the last decade.