Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Children, Schools and Families – in the House of Commons at 2:30 pm on 8 March 2010.
Michael Gove
Shadow Secretary of State (Children, Schools and Families)
2:30,
8 March 2010
I think that it is the Secretary of State who will get an F for fail. The Association of Colleges has looked at our figures, and the 80,000 whom we are talking about are all people who were in school in 2002. Whether or not they went on to school or sixth-form college, we looked at those who went on to Oxbridge. The right hon. Gentleman's deputy, the Minister for Schools and Learners, repeated that mistake two weeks ago and had to acknowledge that it was an error. I hope the Secretary of State will have the good grace to acknowledge his error when he comes back to the Dispatch Box now. When more than 40 per cent. of the people who go on to Oxford and Cambridge come from fee-paying independent schools, where they have access to the high quality IGCSE, why does he deny poorer pupils in state schools the chance to have that high quality qualification? Why the prejudice towards the poor from his Labour Government?
Secretary of State was originally the title given to the two officials who conducted the Royal Correspondence under Elizabeth I. Now it is the title held by some of the more important Government Ministers, for example the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
If you've ever seen inside the Commons, you'll notice a large table in the middle - upon this table is a box, known as the dispatch box. When members of the Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet address the house, they speak from the dispatch box. There is a dispatch box for the government and for the opposition. Ministers and Shadow Ministers speak to the house from these boxes.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
