1. What steps she has taken to raise attainment among less affluent children at school. (904948)

We have introduced the pupil premium, which supplies significant additional funding to schools for each disadvantaged pupil.

Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who has been a passionate advocate of higher standards in education for every single child in the country. Our reforms of the curriculum, of qualifications and of accountability, along with the drive to establish more good and outstanding schools, will continue.

I can report to the Minister that schools in my constituency are delighted with the pupil premium, and are particularly delighted that they have complete flexibility in relation to how they can best use it to improve the outcomes for children. May I urge the Minister not to be seduced or tempted by those who want more central prescription of how the pupil premium might be allocated in future?

I will not be tempted or seduced. I agree entirely with my right hon. Friend that it is vital for us to continue to give schools the flexibility that will enable them to spend the money in the best evidence-based way. As my right hon. Friend will know, the Ofsted reports that were published last week show that schools are beginning to use it very effectively to narrow the gap.

One of the ways in which the last Government sought to address this issue was the London Challenge, which, as the Minister will know, had a very positive impact on the achievement gap in London. What lessons does he think can be drawn from it for the rest of the country?

There are certainly a great many lessons to be learnt from the London Challenge. The hon. Gentleman will be aware of reports which have been published over the last few months and which seek to draw those lessons. One lesson that I would draw is that it is important for us to provide the opportunities that the London Challenge helped to create for every part of the country, and not just for areas that have been selected by Ministers.

Even if we believe the argument that faith schools improve attainment—which I do not, given the middle classes’ propensity to discover God shortly before their children’s schooling is due to begin—is segregation by faith a price worth paying by our society?

We certainly do not want schools that seek to segregate members of the society that we have, but, as people in a liberal society, we also want to respect the right of many parents to have their young people educated in the way that they wish.

I welcome the new Education Secretary to her job. I also welcome back the Schools Minister, who has made the greatest comeback since Lazarus. I am not sure why we need two Schools Ministers, one in the blue corner and one in the yellow corner, but perhaps that is the reason.

One suggestion for the Education Secretary that I have received is that she should change the locks at Sanctuary Buildings to ensure that the former Education Secretary and his adviser Dominic Cummings cannot sneak back in after dark. However, she could help less affluent pupils immediately if she reversed her predecessor’s political instruction to Ofqual to end the AS-level link, which research shows helps them to obtain good university places. Will she signal a fresh start by reversing that decision?

There are no plans to go down the route that the hon. Gentleman has suggested. We, as a Government, believe passionately that the final years of education for young people should be years in which they focus not just on examinations, but on learning. The problem during the most recent period of Labour government was that, in the last four years of education, too much time was spent taking exams rather than learning new facts.