In the same week that the coalition pushed military ethos projects, shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt said that he would expect Ofsted to “value” character education in schools.
Speaking on Monday at The Character Conference, organised by Demos and The Jubilee Centre, Mr Hunt stopped short of saying that he would create a measurement for character.
Instead, he felt the inspectorate should value character but allow schools the freedom to choose how it was implemented.
Ofsted declined to comment on the idea.
Speaking about Ms Morgan’s £5 million allocation, the shadow education secretary said: “I think we know that cadets and having military involvement in schools and good role models can often be a good source of character development, so it’s an interesting project.”
He also called for a return of British spirit in the classroom and referred to
the characteristically “pithy views” of Winston Churchill, a man who, he said, was “bang on” when he said: “failure is not fatal and it is the courage to continue that counts”.
He also said that if Labour took control at the next election, he would have teacher training include character “boosting” lessons.
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