This is no time to scrap the DCSF

So it's heartening to hear shadow children's minister Tim Loughton's "absolute commitment" to Every Child Matters in this week's Interview. Locally, then, we can take it that children's services departments and multi-agency working overseen by children's trusts will remain intact under a Tory government.

Nationally, however, the picture looks different. In a speech to the RSA in June that has rather slipped under the radar, shadow children's secretary Michael Gove showed his true colours. He issued a clear signal that a Tory government would scrap the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF), reinstating a department focused purely on education. "Under Gordon Brown and Ed Balls, schools have lost their principal purpose - and been saddled with a host of supplementary roles," Gove said. "We have one department which manages schools - and sees them as instruments to advance central government's social agenda. What we do not have - and what we desperately need - is a department at the heart of government championing the cause of education." He also lamented that Ofsted "is given 18 areas on which to judge a school and only a handful of them relate explicitly to educational attainment".