David Miliband

It was a huge privilege to open the new Thomas Tallis school today. It is a fantastically impressive example of the Building Schools for the Future programme.  But the most impressive thing – kids in a year 7 class I dropped in on talking about the quality of the teaching rather than just the buildings.

During the opening ceremony Tim Warner, the chair of governors, made a speech which unearthed a great quote from Sherlock Holmes that says it all about why the Building Schools for the Future investment was right:

Holmes and Watson are on a train travelling through south London…

“Holmes said, ‘It’s a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this.’

I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.

‘Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea.  The board-schools.  Light-houses my boy!  Beacons of the future!  Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future.’”