National Curriculum

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is a passionate campaigner on ways we can better protect our children, and there are a number of things we can do. As she may know, I had the opportunity to talk to a group of outstanding young people last week at the Stonewall conference on fighting prejudice in education and empowering young people. They made some important points about the best of personal, social, health and economic education, and we must learn from the best schools and ensure that others follow their lead.

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

As someone who has campaigned for some time for a greater narrative approach to history teaching in schools, may I thank the Secretary of State for retaining the chronological focus of the history curriculum, rather than the current “Doctor Who” style, time-travelling fantasy, in which pupils study the Romans, the Tudors and then the Victorians? What does he envisage happening to key stage 4 and the dovetailing with key stage 3, so that pupils will have the chance to learn narrative British history all the way up to 16?

[Michael Gove]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support. Several distinguished historians, from David Abulifia at Cambridge to Professor Jeremy Black at Exeter, have joined him in welcoming this curriculum. May I also congratulate him on the fantastic review of his new book on the battle of Bosworth in the books section of The Daily Telegraph on Saturday? I recommend it to everyone. The GCSE criteria on which we are consulting are designed to achieve exactly what he sets out.