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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, revels in making grand policy announcements and putting forward bold ideas. He is attempting to push through massive reforms but Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, says he is actually failing the nation’s children. Let’s say a very good morning now to the Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, good morning to you Mr Twigg. Just on that introduction I gave about Michael Gove, he has been a bit of a whirlwind of activity and initiatives, do you feel baldly that you are rather hanging on to his coat tails during these couples of years in office?

STEPHEN TWIGG: Good morning, Dermot. I think my concern is that he has got his priorities wrong and that he is out of touch with the big issues. Let me give an example, in many parts of the country there is a crisis now in terms of primary school places, not enough places for children at five to go to primary school. If I were Education Secretary that would be my number one priority, I do not get any sense of urgency from Michael Gove about this crisis.

DM: Just to digress slightly, but it is related, is that caused by Labour’s immigration policy, the great bulge in the birth rate there?

ST: Immigration is definitely a factor, birth rates is the main explanation and in some parts of the country there is …

DM: Four and five years, it takes us back to the Labour years.

ST: Undoubtedly, but we had a big programme for rebuilding both primary and secondary schools and one of Michael Gove’s first decisions was to cancel those programmes. This week he has made an announcement of what he calls the Priority Capital Programme for schools, I welcome the fact that some schools have got money but it is a fraction of what we were going to invest. He should be giving total priority now to this crisis of …

DM: So you’re saying he should be bringing back your building programme in its entirety?

ST: Not at all, not at all. I think what he could have done two years’ ago was to review our programme, to scale it down if he wanted to spend less money …

DM: So it was over-ambitious, one example of Labour’s overspending then was it?

ST: Not at all, not at all. What he wanted to do was to cut the amount that would be spent. If you look at government spending as a whole, capital spending, spending on buildings in the government as a whole has been cut by 30% yet in education Michael Gove got a terrible deal from the Treasury, the cut is 60%, it is double the average for government as a whole. Now if he had got the 30% there would have been some difficult decisions but there would have been a hell of a lot more money for these desperately needed extra places in our primary schools as well as to continue with the refurbishment programme.

DM: So more places in primary schools, refurbishing the schools, what about this issue we are hearing a lot of now with under-performing teachers and indeed head teachers. Is that damaging morale or is that rooting out those that are letting the nation’s children down?

ST: It’s vital that we get the balance right here. Look, if a teacher isn’t up to the job, they should not be in front of a class and if a head teacher needs more power to deal with that, I will support that and I said that when Michael Gove made the announcement earlier this year. However, I think a lot of the rhetoric from Michael Gove and other minister is so negative, it makes it sound as though we have a terrible generation of teachers when actually OFSTED have said we have the best generation of teachers ever, so I think we need a complete change in the rhetoric, we need to improve the morale of our teachers. I’d go further than that though, I think if we are going to improve our schools we can learn from countries that have really good education, Finland for example, Japan is another example. Why do they have good education? They allow their teachers to get on with the job, they give them autonomy, they give them space to plan, they enable them to learn about the very best practice. That’s the direction I want to take Labour’s education policy.

DM: It’s interesting you talk about, I know you have also been talking about giving public speaking lessons for children in schools but back to my first question, Michael Gove, compare and contrast, talking about an issue like under-performing teachers, a lot of parents very concerned sometimes about the quality of teachers that their young children get. You’re talking about giving them public speaking lessons, which is more important?

ST: Both are important and it is not just public speaking, I am talking about speaking more generally. I think it is a profoundly important issue that children are able to speak and listen and the reason I have launched a document about this this week and have spoken about it, is that I have been talking to businesses, I’ve been talking to schools and what they say is that too many children and young people are leaving education unable to have the necessary skills in speaking and listening. So yes, it is partly about public speaking but it is mostly about day to day speaking. So for example, what employers say is when someone comes for an interview they often don’t have the basic presentation skills. What universities say is that often young people who have been through private schools are often much better prepared in terms of their ability to do an interview than those who have been through state schools. Now social mobility has been a big theme this week with the Sutton Trust Conference, I think if we are going to get a more mobile society I want the children in the state schools, in the inner city schools, to be getting the same level of support for their speaking and listening skills than those in private schools.

DM: But overall, on the big issue, you want better schools, it not whether the children can speak or not, you want better teachers, better head teachers, that’s the big issue.

ST: I think the big issues are all of those things, you’re right. Leadership is crucial, one of the things we did in government is we set up the National College of School Leadership to improve the quality of headship. I actually think we have some brilliant head teachers but we need to get that in every school obviously but we also need to ensure that teachers are given support as well as challenge. If I go into a school I often say to the head teacher, are there any teachers here who aren’t up to scratch and normally a head might say maybe one, maybe two. Now for the children in those classes, they are being let down, they are being let down and that is why I support measures that say that teachers shouldn’t be able to teach if they are not capable of doing so but we also need to make sure that they are given the training and the professional development so that they can improve. It is only a relatively small number who are completely incapable of teaching.

DM: Perhaps I over-trivialised the issue of public speaking because it is all that matter, isn’t it, of confidence in how you conduct yourself and that keys in to the debate. No doubt you agreed with Michael Gove when he addressed that, this issue of the over-dominance in our societies particularly of people who have been privately educated. Those coming from the public schools seem to have better life chances because of the quality of the education they are getting, at a cost yes but they seem to over-dominate our society. You share that analysis, do you share the solution, if there is one?

ST: I absolutely share the analysis and reading the Sunday papers, Alan Milburn is publishing a report this week which shows for example the numbers of Members of Parliament from private schools is actually higher now than it was back in 1997. We have a very, very serious issue and my concern is that a lot of what Michael Gove is doing is undermining social mobility. We invested in Sure Start, Early Years, Children’s Centres – all the evidence from other countries is that if you invest in the early years of a child’s life, you give them greater opportunity later on. The government has removed the requirement for face to face careers advice in secondary schools, good advice about what you should do next is crucial to someone’s chances of getting on. The government is changing so that we don’t have the same emphasis on vocational education which is …

DM: So you really think you were getting there but people say that Academies, Free Schools, it’s much the same, much the same track, furrow that you were ploughing.

ST: The key to success is what you said earlier Dermot, which is the quality of leadership, the quality of teaching in a school. Labour’s Academy programme was focused on schools that were struggling and particularly in areas of greater social and economic need. The analysis of their results suggest than on average they were doing better than other schools, however there were lots of other great schools that weren’t Academies and my concern with Michael Gove is he seems to think that unless you’re an Academy or a Free School you can’t be a successful school. I have visited dozens of schools since I became Shadow Education Secretary that are doing brilliant work, some of them are Academies but lots of them aren’t Academies. We should celebrate both and we should challenge both.

DM: Can I just ask you, you are responding to a lot of Michael Gove’s initiatives, he had a go at an exam question last week, an AQA question that was set, I think it was in Religious Studies, which was explain briefly why some people are prejudiced against Jews. Michael Gove said that was insensitive and bizarre, do you think that or do you think it is a valid question?

ST: I don't think it is a valid question. I think it is a deeply insensitive and inappropriate question because it somehow suggests that there can be some valid explanation for anti-Semitism.

DM: Does it suggest there’s a valid one or you’d better understand where it comes from because you need to counter it?

ST: Well I think if that’s the basis – and I’m sure that is the basis – then it could have been worded in a much more sensitive way and certainly the reaction of people in the Jewish community is one that I entirely understand so I think it is right that this is looked at and if we are going to have questions of this sort in the future, they should be framed in a very, very different way.

DM: Okay, last thoughts on Baroness Warsi, co-chairman of the Conservative Party, do you think she has got questions to answer about her overnight allowances?

ST: There do seem to be some questions to answer and I think it is important that this is investigated in the usual way, through the House of Lords.

DM: Okay, Mr Twigg, thank you very much indeed. Shadow Education Secretary Stephen Twigg there.