year before there's an election. And we can foresee lots of assessments of Mr Gove's tenure as secretary of state. Based on the various paeans already received by various right-leaning organs of the press, I think we can safely assume that – unless something goes disastrously wrong in the months ahead and some ordure converges with the ventilator – then he will be garlanded with the title of best education secretary in the world ever.

To his credit, he's certainly stuck at the job and will likely prove one of the longest-serving education secretaries of the modern age. But many crave quality as well as quantity, and I am not convinced that his true legacy will be remembered as brilliant.

Only time will truly tell and any real assessment ofhis achievements will need to wait until an age when I'll be in an old people's home.

But that won't stop me getting out my crystal balls and proposing three reasons that Michael Gove's legacy won't be anything like the truly groundbreaking work of a true Tory reformer, Kenneth Baker, whose legacy includes changes to teacher training, a national curriculum and paving the way for the specialist school movement.

First, amid the flurry of early pronouncements, there was a rhetoric and a reality that has proved divisive and distracting. The notion of becoming an academy seduced some schools, but most heads confess to me that it wasn't a really a yearning for liberation that motivated them, it was a dash for cash. Many school leaders now report a labyrinthine bureaucratic