Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Goodman Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I am amazed that the Secretary of State thinks he can produce a nation of six-year-olds all of whom can spell Tuesday and know that there are two ways of spelling pear/pair. I think that even Hansard will have some problems with that! Is the Secretary of State not aware that pushing children to do things that they are not ready to do is totally counter-productive? In most European countries, they are not even at school at the age of six. Does the right hon. Gentleman not know that, according to the results of a UNICEF study, the one feeling that British seven-year-olds understood was how it felt to fail?

[Michael Gove]

I feel sorry for some seven-year-olds because they will have lived through years of Labour government when failure was all around them, but at last there is a Government who have high expectations for every child. I am sorry that the spirit of consensus that has prevailed so far has been shattered by the hon. Lady, because I had assumed that Labour was committed to ensuring that children in their earliest years had an opportunity to enjoy the very best teaching. It seems to me that it is not just in east Durham that there is a poverty of aspiration on the part of the Labour party.