Education

Conservative plans to improve state education across the country and close the attainment gap between the richest and poorest students have received the backing of Holborn and St Pancras Candidate, George Lee. Shadow Schools Secretary, Michael Gove, recently set out proposals to raise standards in the worst performing schools, improve school discipline, get every child who is capable of doing so reading by the age of 6, allow new schools to open, and create an additional 220,000 good school places.

Other proposals included:

- Helping charities, voluntary groups and parents to set up new schools in the state sector.

- Strengthen the powers of head-teachers to expel unruly pupils.

- Promote more extra-curricular activities, awards for pupils for academic and sporting achievement, a system of prefects, and school uniform policies.

George said, “These proposals will help raise standards in our schools, tackle unruly behaviour and deliver more teaching by ability to stretch the strongest and help the weakest. We need to make it easier for charities, groups of parents and other providers to open up new schools where there is an urgent local need. Education is the most powerful way to break down social barriers and a future Conservative Government will make it its number one priority.”

School inspection is vital. Parents need an authoritative and independent review of school performance and teachers need objective analysis of what's good and what could be improved within our school system. Ofsted's role is crucial but its focus on improving school standards has been blurred by a proliferation of additional bureaucratic demands. The Conservatives have recommended that Ofsted report on just four vital areas of school performance rather than the 18 demands insisted on at the moment.

That would mean more focus on teaching and less on red tape.

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Making sure that underprivileged young people fulfill their potential has always been important to me. I have always encouraged them have the confidence to to break through glass walls and glass ceilings, as I did. The LSE's Widening Participation programme encourages students from comprehensive schools (like I was) to do this too.

I visited LSE to talk to some very bright students from a range of backgrounds and races about positive discrimination and positive action as a means of dealing with inequality in society. We discussed what the better option was for encouraging state school kids to apply to the country's top universities.

The students thought that positive discrimination, favoured by Labour, did state school students a great disservice. Lowering entry level standards to University for state schools was just a bad piece of social engineering. It lowered overall standards, led to tokenism and resentment, demeaned the individual and didn’t help social mobility.

They believed that positive action - ie mentoring, training, and programmes like this one - is a far better alternative to raise students from under-privileged backgrounds up to the required standard.

This is what both I and the Conservative Party firmly believe too. I think that Labour's attempts to lower entry standards for comprehensive kids to top universities is just a smoke screen to hide the fact that they have failed to improve our primary and secondary education standards after 12 years in government.