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Education Bill

Is it? Well, I am pleased to be in agreement with him. It bodes well. To illustrate that point, I recall talking to a young offender in a young offenders institute. I asked him how he ended up there, expecting him just to be a bad sort, but he said, ““I was really interested in electronics. I wanted to be an electrician, but every time I thought I was going to do something practical about electronics, they gave me paper about it.”” He said, ““I can't do the paper; I can do the thing.”” That is how we have failed—for 13 years and more—a whole generation of people whose skills lie in the practical and technical fields. I could go on about how restoring discipline in our schools will help most those on free school meals, and about how discipline problems are highest in schools in deprived areas, but I will not. I finish with a plea, because I know that Opposition Members are as concerned as we are about the matter. We cannot any more afford the luxury of well-meaning idealism, and we cannot afford to refuse to face difficult realities, because the reality that we refuse to face is the reality that faces our poorest children throughout the country, every day and for the rest of their lives.