Labour was last night accused of ‘destroying school standards’ with yet another overhaul of the curriculum.

Education Secretary Lucy Powell was told ‘children will be the losers’ after she announced ‘speaking skills’ will become just as important as reading and writing in GCSE assessments.

Ms Powell also signalled fewer children will be sent home for poor behaviour, because she wants to reward ‘inclusion not exclusion’. Outlining her vision, she vowed to ‘widen the narrow view of what good is’ and insisted she was leading the ‘Department of Hope’.

Downing Street said her speech to school leaders in Birmingham was designed to ‘set out her vision to reimagine childhood in a new era’.

The plans appear to be in direct contrast to reforms to toughen up standards under previous Tory governments.

Tory education spokesman Laura Trott said: ‘Blowing open the curriculum and assessment review once again creates more confusion for schools and risks reopening the hard-won debate over the importance of a knowledge-rich curriculum.’

She said Ms Powell’s rebranding of her brief as the ‘Department of Hope’ was ‘Orwellian’.

Referencing George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, she said: ‘The Ministry of Peace made war, the Ministry of Love tortured people, and now Lucy Powell has the Department of Hope while school standards are being destroyed.’

Alan Smithers, professor of education at Buckingham University, said the proposals looked ‘woolly’ and added: ‘Hope won’t get pupils through exams.’

In her speech to the Confederation of School Trusts, Ms Powell said ‘speaking, listening and communicating’ would become a ‘core part’ of content and assessment, ‘from primary to GCSE and beyond’. This is despite speaking and listening exams already having been dropped as counting towards English GCSE final marks in 2013, due to teachers inflating grades.

Read More: Education Secretary is told children will be the losers after she said ‘speaking skills’ will be as important as reading and writing in new plans for GCSEs

Lucy Powell’s speech was 20 minutes of patronising banality. You could have set it in an A-level English paper, asking: ‘What, if anything, is this person trying to say?’

Lucy Powell, Education Secretary, gave a speech about the importance of clear communication. She was as clear as public-lavatory glass. The speech was a blizzard of cliches. It was as if there had been an explosion at a platitudes factory.

The Confederation of School Trusts had gathered in Birmingham for its annual conference. The chap who spoke before Ms Powell gave it some oratorical welly. Sir Hamid Patel, in white robes, imamah hat and spindly beard, squeakily enthused about the transformative possibilities of good schooling. This is not to say that Sir Hamid was above speaking rubbish. His speech mentioned ‘relational practices’, ‘wellbeing indicators’ and ‘hubs of well being’. But at least he delivered it with verve. He became so animated that one feared his little turban might whizz off its moorings.

Then he introduced Ms Powell. The sluice gates of mediocrity opened. Before long the audience were up to their beaks in it, like chickens in a flash flood.

‘Wow!’ bellowed lame Lucy as the mystical figure of Sir Hamid retreated to his seat. ‘How do I follow that?’ We soon learned that she intended to follow it with 20 minutes of patronising banality. Blandness yielded to truism. Commonplace was followed by meaningless word-nimbus. It was as if someone had loaded a farmer’s muck spreader with mashed potato. You could have set this speech as a devilish question in an A-level English paper, asking candidates: ‘What, if anything, is this person trying to say?’

Ms Powell said she wished to promote ‘oracy’. This word was once popular with Blairite policy wonks but it never quite caught on as an educational imperative. It describes the ability to express yourself in a grammatical, confident fashion.

Read More: Lucy Powell’s speech was 20 minutes of patronising banality.