Twigg v Gibb, round 4

This may be the last of this spat: Stephen Twigg, Labour’s education spokesman, has replied to Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister, about the sale of school playing fields.

Twigg is slowly clawing back lost ground. Having withdrawn the allegation that Michael Gove “tried to cover up” the sale of 10 playing fields, he now apologises for the words, which The Daily Telegraph used in error.

(Apologies_for_outbreak_of_blog_uselessness here. I don’t know how else to force the following text to the end of the images.)

Meanwhile, and I hardly dare start another dust-up, a transcript of Twigg’s interview with The Guardian was published yesterday, and in it he seems to want to curtail even further than Ed Balls did as Schools Secretary the freedom of academies to decide their own curriculum:

I’ve always believed in schools having independence and flexibility. I believe in school autonomy, but I think there’s a certain basic entitlement parents and children expect of a state funded school. The national curriculum [for example] should apply to academies and free schools.

Perhaps he misspoke, but academies are exempt from many of the requirements of the National Curriculum. Ed Balls in 2008 required new academies to follow the National Curriculum in core subjects. I had hoped that Twigg, a moderniser, would want to tilt Labour policy further in favour of “independence and flexibility”, rather than back in the Ballsian direction.

I wonder what Andrew Adonis, the architect of the academies policy, would make of it?

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• Junius

  Along with tens of thousands of pupils, I never had the use of a dedicated school playing field in my immediate post-war schooling days. My first school was primary-cum-secondary and one afternoon a week classes used to walk half a mile to the nearest council-owned playing fields, where facilities were rudimentary, to put it mildly. None of the teachers were sports specialists; all we did was kick a ball about during the winter, and chuck and bat a ball about during the summer.

  An 11-plus failure, at the age of thirteen I passed a scholarship to the city art school. As there were only thirty boys in the two classes making up the junior art department, games afternoon was even more of a farce. Come rain or shine, we trekked almost a mile to yet another council-owned playing field, where organised games consisted of football and cricket matches between the first and second year pupils. I alternated umpiring with refereeing duties, depending on the season. Being regularly accused of favouritism, blindness and illegitimacy was a small price to pay for avoiding grubby knees and bruising from painful collisions with fellow pupils or being struck by hard leather projectiles.

  Apart from larger, sturdier and stupider oafs who revel in the opportunity to inflict violence on cleverer, physically-inferior classmates without fear of retribution, I doubt whether many children really enjoy sports afternoons. The government that makes sports and games an optional element in the curriculum will reap huge dividends in support from grateful pupils when they are old enough to vote. Nick Gibb need not be so defensive: selling off school fields is yet another way to curry favour with a future electorate.

• JohnJustice

  A basic entitlement to a core curriculum which is considered to be in the best interests of society at large is fine by me. Otherwise free schools and academies would be able to tilt the core curriculum towards what is considered to be in the interests of their sponsors which may not necessarily equate with the greater good.

• Graeme Harrison

  Sport at school: why most of adults take little or no exercise.

• Pacificweather

  Brilliant idea. Let’s leave the curriculum to sponsors, some of whom want to teach that the world is only 5000 years old. Next you will be wanting them to teach that Tony Blair isn’t a war criminal.

• porkfright

  Indeed-just the chance for our ruling classes to freely rewrite history.

• JohnJustice

  It’s more likely that certain sponsors will be teaching that Tony Blair IS a war criminal.

• Pacificweather

  The truth will out eh? That would be fun. What would he do then. He might make the same mistake as poor old Oscar Wilde and then we’ll have him. No, far to devious. Perhaps the next generation will have the courage to indict him.

• Pacificweather

  Again. They tried to teach me that the first world war was caused by an anarchist killing an Austrian duke. ‘as if’ as the current generation might say. I gave my history master a piece of green cheese and told him it was moon rock. He laughed and said not to blame him it was in the curriculum. He was young but had been in the services in Malayan insurgence. The other two good teachers had both served in the second world war so when I read of calls for soldiers to become teachers I have some sympathy with the idea.