We have not betrayed a generation

Impatience for improvements in education is something I share. It is not a new phenomenon: in 1439 William Bingham, a London rector, petitioned Henry VI about the ‘great scarcity of masters of grammar’.

What amazes me in the modern age is our collective complacency on education since the war. The independent National Foundation for Educational Research pointed out in the early 1990s that reading results in primary schools scarcely budged for almost 50 years. Staggeringly, this appeared to placate governments of both colours who were simply concerned with ensuring that things didn’t get worse.

In 1997 we rejected that quiet life. We set ourselves an ambitious task: to make far-reaching social change in a country where the scales of justice and opportunity were tipped against the poor and where public services were suffering from years of neglect and underinvestment.

So we famously made education our number one priority and backed that commitment with a significant increase in funding, with spending on education rising from 4.5 per cent of national income in 1997 to 5.6 per cent today. We now spend on sports facilities alone roughly what was spent across the entire schools network in capital investment in 1997.

This investment in Britain’s future has rebuilt crumbling schools, introduced modern IT, recruited 36,000 more teachers and 150,000 more support staff and paid them a decent wage. As a result, the ratio of pupils to adults is now far lower in both secondary schools and in primary schools.