01 October 2023 , 15:55
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Former Education Secretary Michael Gove said some state schools are more like “teen crèches”.
After 13 years of Tory rule, the Cabinet minister admitted many pupils are being failed by the school system.
“Show me what those who really have money and influence do,” he told a fringe event at the Conservative conference. “Do they send their kids to, essentially, a teen crèche or do they send them to highly academic institutions with competitive team sports?”
Mr Gove said he believed that state schools should provide a more rigorous education. He gave the example of one academy that provides extracurricular activities like “putting on a play in ancient Greek or Latin”.
He highlighted how Jade Goody had chosen to send her children to private school, saying that “to her enormous credit” she used “celebrity in order to fashion a better life for herself”. “What did she do with her money? What was the first thing she chose to do? It was to send her children to independent schools. Now, she shouldn't have had to do that because the state school should have been good enough,” he said.
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“But the whole point was she wanted the very, very best education for her children… She knew the type of education that was best, not private, but education that was academically rigorous. Education, where the subjects that are being taught would give her sons the chance - if they wanted - to go to the best universities.”
Speaking at an event hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies, Mr Gove said one of the things that has “most irritated” him is how people, “broadly but not exclusively on the left”, have said kids need more creativity and teamwork at school, or that facts can be found on the internet.
The Housing, Levelling Up and Communities Secretary added: “Creativity comes from mastery of knowledge and skills in a particular domain. Mozart was creative, because he'd spent hours and hours from an early age learning it.” Mr Gove spoke about his views on education after being asked what speech in his career he had been "most proud of" and had been "the best reflection of his thinking". He said it was his speech on how Jade Goody inspired his educational reforms.
In July Labour announced plans for children to learn creative subjects like art, music, drama, or sport up to 16. Keir Starmer promised major reforms to the school curriculum as he vowed to "shatter the class ceiling" holding ordinary kids back. The Labour leader said he wanted to end the snobbery around the academic/vocational divide after seeing his toolmaker dad feel “looked down upon" and "disrespected”.
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