Here's the speech that Tristram Hunt did not make yesterday, is not making today and won't make tomorrow:
'I would just like to say that no matter what shortcomings our education service had in the past, I would like to put in on record that comprehensive education resulted in more children getting more education than children had ever done before and getting more qualifications than children had ever done before. This meant that the kinds of children and young people previously thought uneducable were brought into education for the first time in our history.
This required a new generation of teachers to adapt their teaching. It wasn't easy. It's still not easy. For a start, children's lives have changed, the conditions for thousands of children and young people has got worse, inequality sets up many problems for young people who are told by the world of consumer goods that they must have more stuff in order to be complete.
But make no mistake, we have to have a system of education that does its best to give everyone the same chances. That means thinking of every child, every young person. We can't have a system where one part competes against another, or one school competes against another - because competition means winners and losers. It's not right and it's not fair, to build in losers into education. Education is about learning, growing and discovering. It shouldn't be about beating the other guy.
So we will be phasing out private education, we will bring all schools under the umbrella of local authorities. Not the old kind of local authorities. We will create a new kind of local education board to run education in the local authorities, made up of representatives of teachers, parents and students. Nationally, we will set up five congresses: political, teaching, parents, students and researchers. These congresses will discuss what they want from education, commission investigations and research, produce materials which express this work. Representatives from each of the congresses will meet up in a new National Education Congress to develop policies.
Bit by bit, the shape of education will emerge from this work. It will take forms that I can't predict - which is rather a good thing - because like anyone else in my job, my background and interests are of one particular kind. No one in this job can or should run education. It has to be run by everyone in education for everyone in society. That is how progress will happen. We will start to see education as a growing point for making society serve everyone's needs not serving the needs of some better than others.'
