A coalition with Tories and Liberal Democrats together is a golden opportunity to create the sort of planning reform that means not only can we have more environmentally sensitive planning, but we can have more homes and more schools.
Teachers themselves know if there's a colleague who can't keep control or keep the interest of their class, it affects the whole school.
Children themselves know they are being cheated. Ultimately we owe it to our children. They are in school for 190 days a year. Every moment they spend learning is precious. If a year goes by and they are not being stretched and excited, that blights their life.
Unfortunately, the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.
What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities, so that head teachers can decide what's truly important, because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.
I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools.
I think more and more respect has been accorded to teachers, and quite rightly so.
I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.
You know you don't see hospital consultants going on strike, and I don't believe that teachers and head teachers should. It's within their rights, it's a civil right, but I think it is wrong in terms of the reputation of the profession.
There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.
One of the problems we have is children are not in school long enough in the day and during the year.
Many more schools can be outstanding.
When I talk to teachers they tell me the things they'd most like from any government are a reduction in bureaucracy, support to help ensure good discipline and a reformed Ofsted.
It's critical that children spend time before they arrive in school in a warm, attractive and inclusive environment, where they can learn through play, master social skills and prepare for formal schooling.
Children in dysfunctional homes at risk of abuse are kept in danger for too long because politically correct rules mean we won't challenge unfit parents.
My sister and I know our lives could have been different - radically, unthinkably, irretrievably different - if we had not been adopted. We might have found ourselves in homes without love, stability or kindness. We might have found ourselves in care for much longer, without the secure attachment that being cradled in a mother's arms brings.
Adopting means opening your home, and heart, to a life you've never known. But there is nothing as richly rewarding as being an adoptive parent.
I'm a decentralizer. I believe in trusting professionals.
You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - if it were 'Twilight' or 'Middlemarch?'
I have a different starting premise from those 100 academics who are so heavily invested in the regime of low expectations and narrow horizons which they have created.
