Fern Britton is not Jeremy Paxman. Fern radiates goodwill and warmth towards her interview subjects. Rather than scowling and battering, she attempts to charm them into submission.

So, just before Christmas, I was hooked when I learned that Michael Gove was going to be the latest in the BBC’s Fern Britton Meets... series. What, I wondered, would I learn about the former secretary of state for education? Would Fern be able to penetrate his famous politeness?

Well, Fern did pretty well really. The viewers learned that Mr Gove believes that everyone should give something back to society. And according to his wife, the columnist Sarah Vine, he believes strongly in redemption.

Fern had been to her daughter’s parents’ evening  - she wasn’t happy

Redemption is something which Mr Gove might have felt he needed when the interview took an unexpected turn. Focusing on his time as education secretary, Fern got personal. She had, she said, just been to her daughter’s parents’ evening - and she was not happy.

“I do not,” she complained, “understand the grades on the report.” “I had to have the teacher explain it to me.”

Children ‘with tremendous anxiety’

And Fern continued. “The children are coming home with an enormous amount of homework. So, they come home, they might have 10 minutes, a quick cup of tea, then it’s work, and it’s work, and it’s work, and this is producing children with tremendous anxiety.”

School work, properly set, Mr Gove responded, gives children a sense of achievement and higher self-esteem.

But Fern wasn’t having any of it. “But properly set is the thing,” she snapped, “but they don’t get a minute, every weekend they’re working.”

Nothing was going to stop her now. “What I will say to you,” said Fern (now on a roll), “is that when your children get to GCSEs and A levels, you will see the difference, you will see them stressing, and you’ll see them, perhaps, sitting up til two in the morning writing essays.” In vain did Mr Gove protest that his reforms had been about instilling a love of subjects. Fern replied robustly that “it’s all about the grades”.

She said that many parents shared her concerns. Fern is bang on the button. From conversations I am having with parents, and teachers, there is a growing consensus that Mr Gove’s insistence on a return to linear GCSEs and A levels has not resulted in the resurrection of a love of learning. Rather, the pressure of the timed exam and the inappropriate nature of the curriculum are causing young people to become more stressed, and this is contributing to a rise in mental ill-health.

The causes of mental illness include pressures created by an over-academic curriculum

While we must welcome the government’s acknowledgement that there is a children’s mental health crisis, we should not allow it to get away with peddling the fallacy that the main cause is cyberbullying. The truth is that the causes of mental illness are far wider, and include child poverty, poor housing and the pressures created by an over-academic curriculum that is assessed by the make-or-break final exam.

Fern Britton nailed Michael Gove. She showed that there is more than one way to tackle an evasive politician, and highlighted extremely serious issues in a way that parents could relate to. She rounded off her attack by asking whether, while education reform might have been required, it had been necessary for Mr Gove to turn everything upside down.

Now that’s a good question, but one that Michael Gove chose, perhaps wisely, not to answer.

Mary Bousted is general secretary of the ATL teaching union @MaryBoustedATL