Oral Answers to Questions

Karen Buck Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

There are few in the Government keener than me on encouraging enterprise among young people—in fact, there is one: the Under-Secretary of State for Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock). However, I would be wary of treating the curriculum as though it were Santa’s sack—as though we could shove into it everything that we wanted and it would magically expand. If we are to ensure that teachers are free from unnecessary prescription, we need to ensure that great teachers can build the curriculum they want with a proper balance between what we expect centrally and what they determine locally.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

Ian McNeilly, the head of the National Association for the Teaching of English, has said of the Government’s new English curriculum:

“It is fantastic that Mr Gove has acknowledged that English as a subject needs to move into a different century. Unfortunately for all concerned, he has chosen the 19th rather than the 21st”.

I am sure that the Secretary of State will regard that as the highest praise, but does he agree that that is almost certainly not what was intended? Will he therefore reflect again on the omissions from the curriculum—particularly in areas such as writing, analytical and listening skills—that have been invoked by our friends in the CBI?

[Michael Gove]

I do not see anything wrong with having the 19th century at the heart of the English curriculum. As far as I am concerned, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy—not to mention George Eliot—are great names that every child should have the chance to study. As for the National Association for the Teaching of English, I am afraid that it is yet another pressure group that has been consistently wrong for decades. It is another aspect of the educational establishment involving the same people whose moral relativism and whose cultural approach of dumbing down have held our children back. Those on the Opposition Benches have not yet found a special interest group with which they will not dumbly nod along and assent to. I believe in excellence in English education. I believe in the canon of great works, in proper literature and in grammar, spelling and punctuation. As far as I am concerned, the NATE will command my respect only when it returns to rigour.