Anyone who was at school about 30 years ago will remember how shit the lessons were, especially if it was a grammar school. The focus was very much on traditional learning, avoiding creativity and certainly having very little vocational or even particularly relevant. So english literature, english history ( the biased version) and geography, maths, french, the sciences, religious instruction (christian only) and a bit of latin thrown in.

We spent most of our time asking ourselves ‘what use will any of this be to us in life?’

In the last 30 years things have moved on a bit: creativity gets more focus; every school seems to love a music scholarship, religious education covers lots of religions and things like technology and citizenship have slipped on to the syllabus.

Personally I don’t think it’s gone far enough: here’s a few suggestions: creative thinking, society, anthropology, politics, careers and the workplace, the art of persuasion, philosophy, politics and economics, health education, personal finance, cosmology, storytelling and film making. And that’s just for starters.

So when I hear Michael Gove boffing on about reforming education and the Baccalaureate (hopefully now consigned to history where it belongs) it reminds me  again what conservatism is so often about.

Not about giving every individual the freedom and responsibility to make the best of their lives, with a gentle nudge from a small state, (which I sometimes think David Cameron and other more progressive tories would like it to be). No, it’s about avoiding change. Or worse, it’s about turning the clock back.

You know, the good old days. With grammar schools and classics teachers, church services and family days ( mum and dad and 2.2 kids ), no multiculturalism, a nice well presented ruling class and a working class who knew their place. The Queen, The Union Jack, the occassional conflict to keep our army chaps busy and definitely no gay marriage ( in fact preferably no gay anything).

And the school syllabus, well how about english literature, english history ( the biased version) and geography, maths, french, the sciences, religious instruction (christian only) and a bit of latin thrown in. How very progressive Mr Gove.