Tories for regimental schooling
Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove has called for a return to traditional methods of teaching children at state schools.
In an interview with the Daily Telegraph, the Tory leader has spoken of the importance of returning to previous schooling methods in order to raise education standards.
His comments come as the Conservatives launch their survey of the top 100 state schools in the country. Mr Gove recommended that students be seated in rows rather than in classrooms with freeform seating arrangements.
“The regimental format is not backward-looking, many of these schools succeed by using tried and tested methods,” he stated.
He also called for a renewed focus on pupils reciting multiplication tables, learning how to conjugate verbs and memorising dates about the accession of kings and queens.
The schools secretary also called for head teachers to be given great powers “to exclude disruptive pupils without being second-guessed”.
Mr Gove added that it was important to return to previous methods of teaching as he claimed that children from poor backgrounds did not benefit from new teaching styles.
“When synthetic phonics was abandoned as the way of teaching children to read because it was too authoritarian, children from book-rich backgrounds survived but those who were already book-poor fell behind,” he says.
The senior Tory official also said there was a “strong case” for the removal of A/S levels and introducing a genuine free market in education.
He told the paper about his plans for businesses, charities and faith groups being paid to operate state schools and also spoke of how poor pupils would be given increased government funding.
