David Blunkett
David Blunkett
David Blunkett, Baron Blunkett, PCis best known as a British politician and more recently as an academic, having represented the Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough constituency for 28 years through to 7 May 2015 when he stepped down at the general election. Blind since birth, and coming from a poor family in one of Sheffield's most deprived districts, he rose to become Education and Employment Secretary, Home Secretary and Work and Pensions Secretary in Tony Blair's Cabinet following Labour's victory in...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth6 June 1947
With the commissioning of new schools undertaken by a local director of school standards, decisions will be fair and transparent, rooted in the needs of the local community. The admissions code and the role of the adjudicator will also be strengthened to provide fairness for all children.
We need to build on what we know works - local oversight of schools to keep a check on performance, timely interventions in schools to support those at risk of failing, and partnerships between schools to help each one to improve.
As education and employment secretary in 1997, I inherited hundreds of schools where the roofs leaked, the windows rattled, and they relied entirely on outside toilets.
Parents don't believe that lifting life-chances in one school means reducing them in another.
In government, you are pressed by the security agencies. They come to you with very good information, and they say, 'You need to do something.' So you do need the breath of scepticism, not cynicism, breathing on them.
That is why with enormous regret I have tendered my resignation to the prime minister today.
I'm guilty of a mistake and I'm paying the price of it,
I grew up in one of the most deprived parts of Britain. I know the problems which inner-city children face.
In an ageing society, it makes sense to support older adults to develop new skills, prolonging their working lives.
I've had a guide dog since 1969. Not the same one, of course: I've had five.
I want to go back to a time when I was very young, when you expected the police to be part of the community and the community to be part of policing.
At this very moment in time there will be people making, breaking relationships, regretting deeply what they've done, and causing hurt, but that is a fact of life, and if we weren't full of emotion, we'd be automatons, and I don't think people want us to be that.
We all accept that there is a compelling need for more effective powers to exclude and remove suspected terrorists from our country,
There is always an effort to link the public and the private.