Teachers should decide the curriculum, not politicians or a panel of ‘experts’

David Laws is an honourable, clear-thinking politician – but looming general elections (and, in the Liberal Democrats’ case, threatened extinction) can have strange effects on a man. Hence his comments about the school curriculum today.

He starts off with what sounds like a liberal complaint: politicians ought not to interfere with education. The school curriculum should not be set by the “whims of here-today, gone-tomorrow politicians,” he said. “”Ministers float in and out of the department, often for quite short periods of time” which created “too much turbulence”, he said. Amen. Michael Gove’s reforms are all about setting schools free from the interference of politicians in local authorities and thanks to his reforms, two million more pupils are in schools that have opted out of town hall meddling.

But Gove has also tightened the curriculum, which had been watered down under Labour with over-reliance on coursework – A-stars emerged, to take the place previously occupied by As.