University of Cambridge Classics Professor Mary Beard has criticised the government for their appointment of a new "history tsar" to advise ministers on the teaching of history in schools.

Professor Beard called it "celebrity culture at its most meretricious" and accused Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, of "playing to the populist gallery".

Gove announced at the Conservative Party Conference last week that Simon Schama, noted historian and Professor at Columbia University, will be appointed as the Education Department’s new adviser, as the government prepares for an overhaul of the curriculum.

Professor Beard stresses that she has "the highest regard for Simon as a historian." In her famous online blog, A Don's Life, she writes: "I don’t know Professor Schama well, but what I know I like a lot."

Her objection instead is to "the use of high flying celebs in developing curricular and educational policy."

The Cambridge academic says that Professor Schama may be a useful person to consult, as he would provide an external perspective on the British system, but that he should not be heading up the new policy.

Professor Beard thinks it would be better to have a panel of "intelligent British school teachers, calling on all kinds of historical talent outside school."

It is her view that the appointment of a single "celebrity" historian is an attempt to save money: it would be less expensive to employ only one person rather than, as she suggests, a panel of fifteen history teachers and a few outside experts.

"Professor Schama is not only glitzy, but also cheap," she says. "And appointing him to whatever ‘job’ he now has is also an insult to History teachers here."

Gove, however, said the appointment would ensure that no pupil would leave school without learning "narrative British history".

In his speech at the conference in Birmingham, he criticised the current approach to history teaching, which he said denied children the opportunity to learn about "our island story".

"Children are growing up ignorant of one of the most inspiring stories I know – the history of our United Kingdom," he said.

He condemned the cursory nature of history teaching and regretted that many children give up history at fourteen, "without knowing how the vivid episodes of our past become a connected narrative". He added: "This trashing of our past has to stop."

Professor Schama, meanwhile, said he had pushed David Cameron to revise the history curriculum, and hopes to instil "excitement and joy" into its teaching.

A second-year history student agreed with Professor Beard. "Simon Schama is one of the best public historians we have, but that does not mean that he can single-handedly solve all the problems facing the teaching of history in schools," she said.