Political Impartiality
in Schools
(Orpington) (Con)
3. What steps his Department is taking to help ensure political
impartiality in schools. (900162)
The Secretary of State for Education ()
The law is clear that schools must remain politically impartial.
I know that colleagues on all sides of the House relish going
into schools for hustings during elections. Children need to
learn about the yellow team, the blue team, the red team and the
green team, but I recognise that some issues can be challenging
to deal with, so my Department has recently published clear,
comprehensive guidance to help teachers tackle sensitive issues
in the classroom in a politically impartial way.
In April this year, members of the National Education
Union claimed that it was somehow impossible to
teach history in a balanced manner. Does my right hon. Friend
share my concern that some children are at risk of being
indoctrinated by political activists masquerading as teachers?
Will he bring forward powers in the new Schools Bill to strike
off those who repeatedly fail to comply with impartiality
guidelines?
Our knowledge-rich history curriculum requires teaching methods
of historical inquiry. We should be teaching children how to
think, not what to think, including how evidence is used
rigorously to make historical claims and discerning how and why
contrasting arguments and interpretations of the past have been
constructed. Our guidance supports this, and schools already have
powers to take disciplinary action where teachers repeatedly
breach their legal duties.
