U.K.'s version of Duncan in bed with Murdoch, Klein

Brit Ed Sec. Michael Gove 

"I'd expect in the next [few] months we'd be making some acquisitions," Klein told the Financial Times. "There's the willingness to put in significant capital."

The most corrupt and the most powerful media man in the world is Rupert Murdoch. His criminal acts -- bribing cops, spying on innocent victims, tapping phones-- have cause great harm and have threatened his empire which is now under scrutiny both in Britain and in the U.S.

Murdoch's strategy has been to reinvent himself as an education/technology organization. He hired former N.Y. schools chancellor, Joel Klein as his fixer-in-chief, and continues to make millions in new contracts with schools systems worldwide.

At the end of summer 2010, Murdoch formally hired Klein for $2m (£1.3m) a year, plus a $1m signing bonus, to launch what he called a "revolutionary, and profitable, education division". Murdoch bought Wireless Generation, a US educational technology firm, for $360m, and gave it to Klein to run. Murdoch's vision was that he would digitise the world's so far unexploited classrooms. He told investors: "We see a $500bn sector in the US alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs." He envisaged some of News Corporation's large library of media content being beamed to pupils' terminals.

The Guardian reports that Britain's education secretary, Michael Gove (the U.K. equivalent to Arne Duncan), a former Times reporter, is now snuggling up to Murdoch and will play a key role in Murdoch's attempt to penetrate (no pun intended) the U.K. education market.

According to the Guardian: 

In a speech to the National College for School Leadership, Gove singled Joel Klein out for praise. Klein was a US lawyer then running the New York school system. But Klein was also Murdoch's own favorite US educator. His clashes with the teachers' unions and his enthusiasm for academy-style "charter schools" had caught the tycoon's interest. Murdoch planned to hire Klein himself.

Gove told his British audience on 16 June that US reformers such as Klein were insisting on "more great charter schools … free from government bureaucracy" because they were "amazing engines of social mobility".