Fiona Mactaggart
Main Page: Fiona Mactaggart (Labour - Slough)Department Debates - View all Fiona Mactaggart's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Michael Gove
I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and to the deputy Children’s Commissioner for her work. I asked her explicitly to accelerate part of her report to inform our work on improving child protection. The hon. Lady says that 16,500 are at risk. The methodology used to identify them is not shared by every professional in the field, but we can put that statistic to one side. The urgency with which we need to tackle the problem is undoubted, and I commend to her the action plan that I outlined in a speech to the Institute for Public Policy Research I made just a few days before the report was published.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
11. What assessment he has made of the likely contribution to the UK’s international achievements of studying creative subjects in school; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)
The arts are mankind’s greatest achievement. Every child should be able to enjoy and appreciate great literature, music, drama and visual art.
Fiona Mactaggart
But is the Secretary of State aware that Britain’s record in Nobel prizes—we have won 19 prizes for every 10 million of our population, whereas the USA has won 11 prizes per 10 million, and the EU has won 9 per 10 million—is achieved partly as a result of the combination of excellent science education and a strong creative tradition throughout our education system? At the same time, the Secretary of State’s EBacc proposals will result, according to research he has commissioned from Ipsos MORI, in something like a quarter of our schools dropping subjects such as art and design, design technology, music and so on. Will that mean that our international achievements, including in Nobel prizes, will slide down?
Michael Gove
If I thought the EBacc proposals would lead to that, I would not be able to sleep at night, knowing that the ghosts of Rutherford and Churchill were hanging over my bed and chiding me for my failures. I had the opportunity to speak to representatives of a variety of arts organisations today. They applauded the work we have done, not least the report that Darren Henley authored on cultural education. Many of the initiatives that we have launched since that time are initiatives that the previous Government were capable of neither initiating nor funding.