Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Children, Schools and Families – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 8 March 2010.
Edward Balls
Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families
2:30,
8 March 2010
We have a national curriculum that specifies the particular areas that need to be covered, including, for example, in history, the first world war, the second world war and the slave trade, but how teaching is done is really a matter for head teachers and teachers, rather than for the Secretary of State to prescribe. We have the best generation of teachers and some of the best school leaders that we have ever had. I think that starting to tell people how to teach and what to teach would be over-centralising. That may be the approach of Michael Gove, but it will not be my approach.
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.