Jim Sheridan
Main Page: Jim Sheridan (Labour - Paisley and Renfrewshire North)Department Debates - View all Jim Sheridan's debates with the Department for Education
(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
No, that would obviate some of the freedoms and the whole essence of academy schools. The funding agreements require the teaching of maths, science and English to 16, thus making them compulsory, but the application of the national curriculum is not compulsory for academies, although it feeds into the specification that determines what is tested and assessed through the GCSE system. In that sense, there is an imperative for schools to teach those subjects.
The essence of the national curriculum review is to produce a curriculum that is on a par with the best in the world, based on evidence of what is taught in those jurisdictions that have the best education systems and against whom graduates from this country’s schools will be competing for jobs in the future. The national curriculum, which will be published and available to parents, will be of such a quality that it will become the norm and the benchmark against which parents will judge the quality of their schools.
Finally, I want to touch on the part that teachers play in our school systems as far as history is concerned.
