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Children, Schools and Families

May I start by thanking the hon. Gentleman for his kind words and welcoming him to his new brief in the shadow Cabinet? Like him, I am very much looking forward to our debates in the coming weeks and months. I know how much he enjoys debating in this House and I hope that we will be able to have some good debates. Although there will be disagreements, I hope that in some areas critical to our country’s future we will be able, together, to shape a consensus on how we can give every child the best start in life, how we can promote good schools and how we can tackle the causes of crime. In that spirit, I welcome what he said about the importance of standards and what he said about personalised learning, and I welcome the support that he has given for the measures that we have taken on discipline. Let me answer a few of the hon. Gentleman’s questions. It is right that we need to make more progress on mathematics. We have benefited from the Rose review on reading, and we want to ensure that we do the same with the maths review. I remind him, however, that in 1997, 62 per cent. of young people reached level 4 in maths, while today that number is 76 per cent. Over 100,000 more young people are now meeting the required standard in maths. We have made progress, but I want to go faster. I welcome his support in making progress. On reducing school class sizes, it is right to say that some infants are still in class sizes of over 30. That applies to about 1.4 per cent. of all infant classes, compared with 29 per cent. in 1997. However, there is further to go, and I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support in that context too. The hon. Gentleman asked about the importance of setting. Setting is very important indeed. It has been increasing in core subjects, and I should like it to go up further. I welcome his support for setting, which I hope that he supports rather than grammar school streaming. It was interesting, from my point of view, to hear no mention of that in his response. I should like to follow up the hon. Gentleman’s point about academies by reassuring him that we are not going backwards on academies; in fact, today we have announced the largest number of academies in one day that there has ever been, and in one stroke we have more than doubled the number of universities that are supporting academies. It is right to say, however, that I was not the first person to make this proposal. The hon. Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) is not on the Front Bench, but I should congratulate him on his appointment to a new job as shadow Minister for universities. In fact, when I arrived in my Department his May speech to the CBI was included in my briefing pack, because officials had never seen such a devastating attack on grammar schools and rebuttal of the case for selection. He even convinced the Leader of the Opposition to support him—at least for 48 hours. My advice to the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) is this: next time the Leader of the Opposition declares a clause IV moment in education, be afraid—very afraid. I am very keen to debate education policy with the hon. Gentleman. I have been looking back at some of the contributions that he has made in recent years. Let me give one example from The Times, where he wrote:"““Every parent in Britain should be given a scholarship for their child, worth broadly the amount currently wasted by the State on their schooling. This scholarship could then be used to buy a place at schools, which would have to compete for parents’ money just as vigorously as airlines now compete for their holiday custom.””" I want consensus, but there will be no consensus on the Labour Benches on the case for school vouchers. There will be no consensus on a public spending cuts guarantee for schooling, nor on an approach to tax incentives for marriage that would help a few but stigmatise large numbers of children in our society who, through no fault of their own, would be worse off but also treated as second class because of a death in the family or a break-up of their family. Let us have consensus not on the basis that some children matter but that every child matters. If we want to raise standards, let us do so in all schools by putting resources in place to deliver that. In my view, only this side of the House is prepared to will the means to that end, which is why I commend this statement to the House.