24 October 2005
Tony Blair says schools in Britain are making good progress but that the time has come to ‘lift our ambitions’.
The government is set to launch a new White Paper on education tomorrow - a ‘pivotal moment’, the PM said.
Mr Blair said he wanted to offer ‘more power and choice for parents’, as well as personalised lessons and improved discipline.
Reflecting on recent reforms, he said exam results were improving and applications for teaching positions rising while school buildings had got better. Mr Blair went on:
"So despite our critics’ desire to focus relentlessly on the negative, the picture is clear: there has been sustained improvement.
"But if the critics should accept the improvement, we must accept the challenge. We must do better.
"We must do better to tackle the pockets of deep educational disadvantage; do better in lifting schools from average to good; do better in enabling more good schools to become genuine centres of excellence, giving as good an education in the state sector as anyone can buy in the private school system.
"To do that, we have to take the reforms so far, learn from them and then complete the process of change."
The system will finally be opened up to ‘real parent power’, he added.
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