Oral Answers to Questions

David Ruffley Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It is certainly the case—I am glad there is consensus on this from both Front-Bench teams—that students who have not secured a GCSE pass at English or maths at the age of 16 must carry on studying until they secure it. Anyone who wants to apply for the technical baccalaureate—a new and explicitly demanding measure of achievement—will have to go beyond that and secure a level 3 qualification, a technical term, in mathematics and produce an extended piece of writing showing that they command the literacy skills necessary for the modern world of work.

[Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

The poet Ted Hughes said of children:

“When they know by heart fifteen pages of Robert Frost”

or

“Swift’s Modest Proposal… They have reefs, for the life of language to build and breed around. A ‘globe of precepts’ and a great sheet anchor in the maelstrom of linguistic turbulence”.

In the light of those words from the late poet laureate, will my right hon. Friend confirm—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have heard the words of Hughes, but I want to hear the words of Ruffley.

[Mr Ruffley]

Members of the Labour party, the enemies of rigour, want to shout down any defence of standards. Will my right hon. Friend please confirm that he will ensure that there is a role for rote learning in the schools of tomorrow?

[Michael Gove]

It was Mario Cuomo, the governor of New York, who said that we campaign in poetry but we govern in prose. This Government, however, are governing in poetic terms—heroic couplets, in particular. With the help of Andrew Motion, another distinguished former poet laureate, we have organised a competition to ensure that children learn verse by heart and that, for all the days of their lives, the great works of English literature can be there, ready to be recalled and to illuminate every corner of their minds and lives.