The dashing of those expectations has led to bitter recriminations. Clarke's critics point out that - whatever the origins of the crisis - the Secretary of State has to take responsibility for what went wrong.It is an assessment with which Clarke himself would probably agree. Having arrived at the DfES with the reputation of a big hitter who would punch his weight in Cabinet - and with Downing Street - and would stand no nonsense from anyone, he was seen as his own man There was no need to "spin" him. He had the experience to deal with ornery backbenchers, demanding trade unions and a hostile press. As right-hand man to the Labour leader Neil Kinnock when the party began its return from the abyss, he knew how tough politics can be - and how long it can take for political fortunes to change.It was a fearsome reputation.
"He started almost from square one and looked at the problem and all the options," says an insider of Clarke's attitude to the thorny top-up fee issue. In fact, he joked at the outset that he needed to show more of his "feminine side". But it was not the whole story, because Clarke not only has toughness, he also has brainpower. Heads expected to be in the pink - to have more money to spend on books, equipment and staff They certainly didn't expect to be laying people off. Whether he has handled this as cleverly as he could is questionable. The received wisdom is that he was badly let down by his civil servants over the figures (they should have foreseen that a concurrent rise in National Insurance contributions and a change in local funding formulae would produce an almighty squeeze on some school budgets), and the resulting furore is therefore not his fault.The comprehensive spending review settlement, which explains how much money schools will have to spend, had been talked up as a record deal. One year later, he is dogged by a different crisis - the one over school funding that no one had foreseen.
The statement was Clarke's online message to schools at the beginning of the academic year when he apologised to headteachers for "mistakes" over this year's budgets.The new Education Secretary arrived at Sanctuary Buildings - the headquarters of the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) - to find a department in turmoil after Morris resigned in the middle of a fiasco over A-level marking. Doug McAvoy, general secretary of the rival National Union of Teachers (NUT) - who has received the Clarke cold shoulder since refusing to sign the national agreement on reducing teachers' workload - is altogether more dismissive. "We welcomed Charles Clarke's appointment, but I am now persuaded by his September statement that we can all make mistakes," he says. But the champagne is likely to be kept on ice in the education world, where his friends and enemies sense that unforeseen events may be causing him to stumble. Even the teachers' union that is friendliest to him, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) led by general secretary Eamonn O'Kane, talks of the past year as being "a bit dramatic" for Clarke because school funding went so "pear-shaped". Tomorrow, Charles Clarke celebrates the anniversary of his appointment as Education Secretary.
