When you are the politician in charge of schools then making sure you get your spelling right is an occupational hazard. In the first ever interview I did as Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families I was asked what the square root of 64 was - luckily I got the answer right at eight.

But not every minister has been so fortunate. Jim Knight, who was schools minister until a few weeks ago, is an expert on modern technology and - unlike me - an experienced user of facebook and twitter. Unfortunately he once tried to update his website on his blackberry and made some rather embarrassing typing errors.

Jim was a brilliant schools minister but, as he was gracious enough to concede, when you spell “pensioners” as “pernsioners” you just have to put your hand up to the error.

It should be obvious to all that spelling really matters. There are those who say that the rules of English spelling are too complicated and that we should all change to phonetic spelling - I have to say I have no truck with that idea. English may have idiosyncratic spelling rules - and at times no rules at all - but it is one of the great languages of the world and I want to make sure all our children and young people can use it correctly.

Of course, language is evolving every day and we should reflect that. We are all now used to getting text speak like “lol” - though I thought it meant "lots of love" till recently! And there is nothing wrong with abbreviations when used correctly.

But whatever shortcuts we use in our everyday lives, including the double edged sword of spell-checker, it’s vital that everyone still learns proper spelling – that goes for Government ministers as well as children. For those with a competitive bent then spelling bees are a great way of learning. The Times championship, with its online tests, is a really good example of how new technology can be used to learn old skills in a fun way. So well done and many congratulations to all the winners.

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