Clause 1 - Duties in relation to high standards and the fulfilment of potential
Education and Inspections Bill
11:00 am
Anne Snelgrove (PPS (Lord Warner, Minister of State), Department of Health; South Swindon, Labour)
Some of the evidence that the hon. Gentleman is giving is anecdotal, but we need to weigh up other evidence. He was talking earlier about extra tuition. It seems to me that the one-to-one relationship with the person giving them tuition is important; it is not just a question of the method. One reason for our wanting to move to better funding for the secondary education system is so that the pupil-teacher ratio can be cut. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is far more important than any educational method, which will be watered down by those pragmatists, the teachers? It is far more important to get the pupil-teacher ratio down, which is an aspiration of the Government.