A question about subordinating conjunctions is not expected to trouble an 11-year-old — but it certainly left the schools minister flustered.
Nick Gibb’s heart must have sunk when questioned live on air about the grammatical definition of the word “after”. He clearly hadn’t done his homework because he failed the test.
Mr Gibb’s revision should have included mugging up on his predecessor’s blunders. Stephen Byers flunked the question “What’s 8x7?” when he was schools minister under Tony Blair.
For Mr Gibb it must have been particularly galling as he was defending new, tougher tests for seven-year-olds, which prompted a boycott by thousands of parents yesterday.
He is now facing a three-pronged attack on the primary curriculum by parents, teachers and some heads. Pupils are having to learn the meaning of terms such as fronted adverbials, modal verbs and split digraphs.
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The “after” question was from a sample of those for 10 and 11-year-olds in key stage 2 tests taken at the end of primary school. These are used to judge whether a child is ready for secondary school and have become much tougher.
Mr Gibb was asked whether the word “after” in the sentence “I went to the cinema after I’d eaten my dinner” was a preposition or a subordinating conjunction. He declared on the World At One on BBC Radio 4 : “It’s a preposition”, only to be told by the presenter Martha Kearney: “I don’t think it is.”
He replied: “‘After’ is a preposition. It can be used in some contexts as a word that co-ordinates a subclause.”
She informed him, however: “In that sentence it’s being used as a subordinating conjunction.”
Accepting defeat, he said: “Fine. This isn’t about me. This is about ensuring that future generations are taught grammar properly.”
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At least Mr Gibb gave an answer, unlike George Osborne, who refused to respond to a question on times tables put to him by a boy aged seven in 2014.