Bill Carmichael: Face the facts about schools

Although I have little sympathy with the teaching unions I can imagine many decent teachers throwing up their hands in despair at the prospects of yet more upheaval.

But I'm afraid Gove has a point – education is in crisis and doing nothing about this is not an option.

And those who believe the answer to every problem is to throw more and more money at it, should learn a lesson from education policy over recent years.

The Labour governments under Blair and Brown increased school spending dramatically – by about 30bn a year.

The result? The UK has nosedived down international league tables on educational standards – to be overtaken by much poorer countries that spend a fraction on schools than we do.

A study by Sheffield University last year showed that around 20 per cent of UK teenagers were leaving school unable to read and write and functionally innumerate.

This has profound implications – not only for our international competitiveness as a nation, but also in terms of the happiness and wellbeing of individual members of the population.

So what is to be done?

Well one clue might lie in those international league tables published recently by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

The countries that consistently perform well – Singapore, China, South Korea – have kept the traditional type of teaching, the facts and figures so beloved by Michael Gove, that have been abandoned in many British schools.

Take for example my own favourite subject – history. Many schools have abandoned the chronological listing of dates and events as horribly old-fashioned and have developed instead a "topic" approach to history.

So pupils might do a topic on the Romans, followed by a topic on the Tudors followed by a topic on the Victorians.

Taught well this can help inform and engage pupils, but what is sometimes missing is the narrative thread that links these events together and helps to explain the modern world.

Such historical context is the key to understanding today's society, contemporary politics and our relationships with the rest of the world.

And without such understanding it is impossible to become an active and engaged citizen.

Gove is absolutely right to call on experts to see if things can be improved.

Private matter

For 25 years Peter and Hazelmary Bull ran a guesthouse in Cornwall and, in keeping with their Christian beliefs, never allowed unmarried guests to share a double bed.

This week, their action was ruled unlawful by a judge in Bristol County Court and they were ordered to pay 3,200 to a gay couple they had turned away.

Judge Andrew Rutherford accepted that the hoteliers' views would have been considered entirely orthodox only a few years ago, but now times have changed.

Really? I don't remember voting for that.

The couple weren't denied a double bed because they were gay, but because they were unmarried. Any unmarried couple would have been treated precisely the same regardless of their sexual orientation.

And should the state be in the business of regulating the private beliefs of citizens?

Isn't odd that the most intolerant people in Britain are those who are always banging on about tolerance?