Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Children, Schools and Families – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 30 November 2009.
Michael Gove
Shadow Secretary of State (Children, Schools and Families)
2:30,
30 November 2009
I am very grateful to the Minister for that very fair reply. I wrote to the Secretary of State last Wednesday, and I am still waiting for a reply to that letter; I look forward to receiving it in due course. After it was written, the BBC reported that the headmistress of the Slough school, Farah Ahmed, had described democracy as a "corrupt tradition", the national curriculum as a tool of "systemic indoctrination" and western education as a threat to "our beliefs and values". Will the Minister and the Secretary of State investigate those views, that head teacher and the foundation following that revelation by the BBC?
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
