Ideas tend to come full circle. It was a Conservative government that introduced the National Curriculum in 1988. Now Michael Gove, the Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, wants radically to reform the National Curriculum — perhaps as a step towards abolishing it altogether.

The debate about the National Curriculum takes us to the heart of two interconnected questions. Is there a core of knowledge which every schoolchild ought to know, without which he or she is unlikely to launch a successful adult life? If so, how is that body of knowledge best achieved — by central diktat from Westminster, or by schools that are free to stand or fall on their own? Mr Gove’s view seems to be “yes” to the first question and “yes — but only for now” to the second.

The first question brings out the traditionalist in Mr Gove. He wants a more old-fashioned approach to history, with the curriculum shaped by leading contemporary historians. The present guidelines make many demands about how history should be taught, but are almost silent about what should be taught. It manages to be both prescriptive and content-free — the worst of both worlds.

The curriculum also does not divide science into chemistry, biology and physics, but along hazily thematic lines. So some schools are able to opt out of teaching individual sciences altogether. Modern languages have suffered a similar fate. If these subjects become the preserve of the 7 per cent who are privately educated, then the National Curriculum has failed at the first hurdle.

There is a deeper problem, too. The National Curriculum was written by educationalist bureaucrats for educationalist bureaucrats. What, for example, does this sentence mean? “Three statutory curriculum aims of successful learners, confident individuals and responsible citizens, which can help to provide a focal point for planning”? The people the curriculum is supposed to serve — parents — are effectively locked out by jargonridden prose. Anything worth saying in education can be said in simple, plain English.

Over-assessment has been another major own goal. Schoolchildren are examined far too often. The modular format of GCSEs has created too many exams, many of which have little value. Instead of being short and demanding, the exam season is long and tedious . If assessment becomes too all-consuming, then it strangles the education it is supposed to record. “Not everything that can be counted counts,” as Albert Einstein put it, “and not everything that counts can be counted.”

The original idea for a National Curriculum was a classic example of the Thatcherite contradiction of preaching decentralisation while doing the opposite in practice. New Labour, with its faith in measurability and the evolution of league tables, deepened the problem.

It is here that Mr Gove’s two plans are not obviously reconciled. While reforming the curriculum on the one hand, he simultaneously wants more schools — like academies and schools judged as outstanding — to be able to opt out of it altogether. Mr Gove seems to accept this as a temporary contradiction. In time, he suggests, freedom will trump prescription.

First traditional reform, then radical change. If Mr Gove does become Secretary of State for Schools, it seems an easy life is not on the agenda.