Chris Vince

I thank the Ministers for their contributions. It is an honour to have an opportunity to speak on behalf of my constituents and my former colleagues in the teaching profession on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Quality of teaching is the single biggest driver of standards in schools. The Bill will ensure that all teachers have or are working towards qualified teacher status. As a former teacher, I welcome that. It is fair to say from the chuntering I have been doing from this Bench that I feel passionately about education. I find it difficult, listening to Opposition Members—I recognise that they generally care passionately about education, but sadly my experience of teaching under their Government was different from how they describe it. I once again ask the Minister to recognise that she is inheriting a workforce in the education system that is absolutely at rock bottom. Let me stress, however—I want to make this clear to Conservative Members—that I put the wellbeing and education of children above any politics. When I talk about the education of young people, I talk not just about examinations but what is described in the teaching profession as the hidden curriculum: important life skills. Indeed, I became quite animated when a month ago, on this very spot, I spoke in a debate about the importance of financial education. As I have said, for me a well-qualified teacher is one who still takes a joy in education that has not been sucked out of him by the endless barrage of comments in the press, and, I must add, a revolving door of Conservative Education Secretaries, although I should offer an olive branch to the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds)—[Interruption.] I was about to say something nice about the right hon. Gentleman.