Congratulations on your appointment as Secretary of State.  As Great Britain faces ever more pressing challenges to stay competitive in the global economy; as school leaders and teachers work harder to inspire young minds with the wonder of maths, science and the humanities; and as schools seek to nurture an engaged and active citizenry, your portfolio stands amongst the most significant and rewarding in government.    In recent years, school standards have suffered as a result of Coalition government policies in education. The watering down of teaching standards – to allow unqualified teachers into the classroom – has led to a 16% rise in unqualified teachers in the last year alone. We have seen class sizes on the rise, as money is syphoned off into the free school programme, diverted away from areas of basic need. The attainment gap – the difference between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers - has widened on this government’s watch. We have seen the disastrous consequences to school standards from a string of high profile free school closures and damning Ofsted judgements. And - as we await the report from Peter Clarke into Birmingham schools - we know that the refusal by this government to address the dangerous lack of oversight in the school system leaves our schools too open and too exposed to risk and falling standards.   Instead of a relentless focus upon structural reform – which is yielding ever more diminishing returns – it would be a good idea to focus upon what we know works in terms of improving standards in schools.  From the Al-Madinah Free School to the King Sciences Academy Bradford to Discovery New School in Crawley, children have felt the terrible cost of those policies.    So I am writing to you on your first day in office to ask whether you plan to end the watering down of teaching standards that this government has presided over by committing to an immediate reversal of your predecessor’s reckless policy of allowing unqualified teachers into our classrooms on a permanent basis?   Of course, we would also welcome your support for a Royal College of Teaching, the introduction of Directors of School Standards (to prevent the kind of dangerous absence of oversight we have recently witnessed in Birmingham), the teaching of English and Maths until 18 for all, the development of a National Baccalaureate, the implementation of effective careers guidance, the funding of 25 free hours of free childcare for 3 and 4 year olds of working parents, and so many other Labour Party policies.  But let us begin at the beginning with the above priorities.    Let me leave you with some rewarding (if gendered) words from AW Rowe’s Education of the Average Child: ‘A pupil should be alive and alert, and interested in himself, his fellows, and his surroundings. He should be flexible and adaptable, able to cooperate with others, but able also to stand out against others when he believes he is right. He should be active, able and willing to work hard and eager during his leisure to cultivate his personal pursuits. He should be morally and socially sound, not anti-authority or too accepting of the established mores of society, but properly critical of them… he should know that freedom and rights have as ineluctable concomitants responsibilities and duties, and be trained to act on this knowledge. He should be as literate as his intellectual powers permit him to be, as fully informed a possible as the world in which he has to live, and able to find things out for himself and to form a balanced judgement on them.’   I hope you can agree with these priorities and we look forward to seeing how you will deliver the kind of effective, considered and meaningful reform our education system needs.    ENDS