Rather than command and control from the top, Gove liberated the system, giving teachers, parents and others a way to set up schools needed in their communities. The idea that Gove was a centralising tyrant is the opposite of the truth. The irony is that most free schools do not adhere to Gove's view of what makes for a good school at all. Many believe in the child-centred, progressive teaching methods that Gove (rightly) thinks have blighted the education system since the 1970s. I am one of Gove's biggest fans but I don't agree with him on everything. Indeed, as I explained in Standpoint, I vehemently disagree with him on the effectiveness of performance-related pay in schools. 

In recent decades most education secretaries have considered it part of their job description to spread upbeat fairytales about how marvelously everyone in the school system was doing while overseeing widespread grade inflation and the dumbing-down of exams. 

But Gove dared to say what is obvious to most teachers — that standards and behaviour in schools were not good enough. Bizarrely, on behaviour issues the teaching unions, who are meant to represent teachers' interests, claimed in response that our schools had no problems, despite the inundation of complaints on online teacher forums and the fact that one-third of new teachers leave the profession within the first five years, citing behaviour as the number one cause. Suddenly, because Gove was agreeing with the teachers, the unions turned against their own members, insisting that all was well in our classrooms. 

The pupil premium gives schools an extra £935 a year for every poor child. It was introduced by Gove, and helps schools to give these children much-needed extra support. Since Gove's reforms, there are 250,000 fewer children in failing schools. 

So why do so many teachers and heads hate Gove? Good question. Ask any teacher, or indeed anyone at all who really hates him, for the three main reasons why they do so. Most of them won't know why: they are simply subject to anti-Gove groupthink. But if you press them for an answer, I guarantee that somewhere in there you'll hear something about "elitism". They will talk about the demanding private school education Gove himself enjoyed as a child not being right for all children, about the fact that not all children can or should learn "academic" subjects, and that the content of the curriculum, whether it is traditional history, English or science, only suits a certain kind of child. 

Remember that 19th-century paternalism towards the "lesser breeds"? Only certain children, those of the elites, who can afford private school fees or expensive houses close to good state schools, are thought to be capable of interpreting the metaphors in Dickens or understanding the depth of Shakespeare, of absorbing the best of their cultural inheritance. Others should be given lessons that are relevant to their culturally impoverished lives — that means weaving popular culture into lessons and more "well-rounded" GCSEs and A-levels that are less academic and knowledge-based, because, well, it suits them, it engages them. Just why American rap music should be relevant to the British boys of Pakistani heritage in Bradford is beyond me, but there you go. No one questions this blatant prejudice. It is a form of acceptable bigotry in the 21st century that brings great shame on us, something that will surely be noticed when history looks back to judge us.