David Willetts

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In Estelle Morris meets David Willetts, the former Secretary of State for Education meets the Tory aspiring to the same post and billed as too nice to be leader by the Times. David Willetts MP has a reputation as a moderniser and as one of his party's Big Thinkers. In this programme, he explains why the Conservatives will not be reinstating the 11 plus: looking back to my friends from primary school and the brutality of the 11 plus, I can remember the trauma in the houses on our estate. He thinks his party has, in the past, had the wrong approach to education, saying it has got too bogged down in endlessly debating mechanisms for selection between schools and that the priority should instead be to increase the total number of good school places overall. Mr Willetts' passion is history. He says the teaching of the subject is one of the most powerful ways we ve got of spreading a sense of citizenship.