School Gate: Was Henry VIII our most important monarch ever? David Starkey thinks so...

The television historian David Starkey said that head teachers should bring back debating competitions and elocution lessons because schools were producing a generation that was illiterate and could not communicate properly.

Narrow-minded bean-counters and the internet had taken over education, he added, suggesting that Britons in the time of Henry VIII had a more rounded schooling and more competent government.

“We are dangerously devaluing knowledge and learning. In much of the national curriculum there is no requirement to remember anything at all. The notion that you need to hold knowledge in your head seems to have been forgotten,” he told head teachers at a conference in Brighton.

He said that pupils “were being fed on a diet of sub-A-level accountancy” and that too many school-leavers were taking “narrow professional degrees such as law or finance”.

“In the United States, anyone going to the top would not dream of doing something so narrow as a first degree — you would do a broad liberal arts degree, then specialise,” he said.

His comments were seen as a swipe at the Government’s decision to withdraw funding for courses taken by anyone who already holds an equivalent or higher-level qualification.

Dr Starkey, whose recent series, Henry VIII: Mind of a Tyrant, looked at the King’s early life, said: “It’s not good enough to say you can look things up on the web. You can produce connections only if you know facts.”

He criticised schools for not stretching the brightest pupils and pitting them against each other. The system was less likely to identify and nurture clever children from poor backgrounds, he said.

“We are producing a generation that is not only illiterate but practically uncommunicative. Elocution competitions should be reintroduced. It is terrific training, along with acting in plays.

“There was a generosity in Henry’s curriculum with music, poetry, physical education and the proper speaking of modern languages.”

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