It has been said that life is a series of fixed timetables. Mick Waters, of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, clearly disagrees. In his interview with The Times today he suggests that children aged 11 to 14 are bored by this inflexibility. In place of the standard school day consisting of eight 40-minute periods, he would prefer more flexibility and imagination. An entire week could be devoted to information technology in its various manifestations; subjects such as history and geography could be combined around common themes; while those aspects of modern languages that need to be taught by rote — French verbs for instance — may best be done in ten-minute bursts. Education, he contends, should be more than the equivalent of factory line assembly.

There is clearly a case for more flexibility in school timetables (and the hours of the school day, for that matter). It also has to be acknowledged that education between the ages of 11 and 14 has long produced unsatisfactory outcomes. Pupils tend to leave primary education having had a reasonable amount of literacy and numera-cy drummed into them, but then (notably boys) drift aimlessly before GCSE coursework is demanded of them. The evidence suggests that lessons, having no real external focus, often become irrelevant. These are too often, to borrow from Churchill, “the years the locusts ate”.

So there is an argument for shaking up the system. What is taught matters as much as how it is taught, but the manner in which it is taught counts as well. With some imaginative thinking, information technology and modern languages, especially, could become less dry and far more inspiring. Mr Waters is right to want to encourage innovation.

There are also, though, dangers in this approach that should be recognised. The quest for common themes rather than separate subjects could become faddist nonsense. History and geography can be combined effectively, especially if the topic chosen involves local terrain, but there is also the risk of teachers deciding to have, for example, a “green month” in which all sorts of essentially unrelated material is thrown together. Michael Oakeshott’s thesis that there are real differences between arts and science is still valid.

The best approach would allow for experimentation. As we also report today, there are concerns that many initiatives in education are pursued without being tested properly. Ministers should encourage different schools to engage in different strategies for motivating children at this sensitive age, pool the results and adjust accordingly. There is no merit whatsoever is replacing uniform teaching with anarchy. The notion of ten-minute lessons sounds rather strange, but if it is a case of pulling a class together regularly to ensure that they have remembered material, it may have virtue.

Flexibility should not become a cover, though, for diluting the concept of a core curriculum. There remains a body of knowledge that, whatever timetable is employed, is important that young people absorb before embarking on the examination season. In his interview with this newspaper, Mr Waters adopts the analogy of salad. What is the sense, he asks, in 40 minutes of tomatoes, followed by 40 minutes of lettuce, and so on? This may well be correct but schools should not be allowed to forget the intellectual meat.