DERBY’S AT ITS BEST WHEN IT STANDS UNITED

DERBY’S schools will rally in the coming weeks and months to support those children badly let down by Michael Gove’s disastrous free school experiment.

Those schools could be forgiven for turning their backs on the episode, such is the disgraceful manner in which the Education Secretary has repeatedly belittled their profession.

You could understand if they told Mr Gove to sort out his own mess, after his frequent attempts to tarnish the reputations of Derby’s schools with lies and falsehoods about standards in Derby.

But instead they will extend a welcome to every former Al-Madinah School pupil they accommodate. They will work tirelessly to integrate those children and help them catch up.

They will do this not because they have to, nor because mopping up Michael Gove’s mess saves him a whole heap of embarrassment.

They will do it because, unlike him, they put the education and wellbeing of our city’s children first, second and third. It is a concept Michael Gove would not grasp.

Education standards in Derby are improving faster than in virtually any other part of the country.

Mr Gove simply cannot bear that fact, and he cannot bear Derby.

It sometimes feels like he and his Government have held a grudge against our city since we stood united against the disgraceful decision to build the Thameslink trains in Germany instead of Derby’s Bombardier.

How satisfying it was to see the train maker awarded the £1bn Crossrail deal last week after our tireless campaigning.

The Government has seen our city as a nuisance since thousands of residents came together to demand a Fair Deal for Derby, after it was shown that Government cuts were punishing cities like ours worst.

Perhaps they saw Derby as an irrelevance. Perhaps they thought we would accept our lot lying down. They were mistaken.

In 30 years in politics, I can rarely remember the city pulling together with such unity on so many occasions in the face of unfair treatment.

And so Derby will dust itself down and pull together once more after the Al-Madinah shambles.

Mr Gove’s free school programme was bound for failure from the outset. While professionals were unfairly pilloried and ridiculed by the minister, free schools were granted untold freedoms and allowed to recruit untrained teachers.

The lesson he should learn from this sorry affair is the necessity to involve local authorities. Derby City Council would have intervened and rescued the Al-Madinah School long before now, if only it had been allowed.

Whether he learns that lesson remains to be seen.

But even Mr Gove must surely have learned by now that our city will not tolerate being treated with contempt by him or his Government colleagues.