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Ed Balls took some decidedly non-partisan stances during an evidence session with the childrens' schools and families select committee today.
At one stage he even praised previous Conservative governments for helping to get the schools system "to a better place," with a lot of help from successive Labour education secretaries.
Committee chairman Barry Sheerman (Lab, Huddersfield) began by asking the secretary of state if they could use his photograph on the report on this set of evidence sessions.
The children's secretary joked that "From Baker to Balls" was not the title he would have chosen - Sheerman replied that it has proved popular.
On Monday the committee took evidence from four former education secretaries - Kenneth Baker, David Blunkett Estelle Morris and Charles Clarke, on the changes to the education system since the 1980s.
Sheerman said they are planning to release four reports on teacher training, testing and assessment, the national curriculum and school accountability as "a bulk set" before the dissolution of parliament.
Balls told the committee he is now a veteran, the second-longest serving secretary of state since Baker.
Sheerman began by asking if after 13 years in office Labour has "cracked the challenge" of ensuring a "high quality workforce" in education.
Balls said there are now "lots of really high-quality people" coming into teaching and the profession has been transformed into one seen as high status and well-paid.
"Ofsted says it's the best generation of teachers we have ever had," he told the committee.
The challenge is to maintain professional development for teachers and make it "a proper profession".
Unlike doctors and lawyers, "historically teachers trained, qualified and then became teachers".
Now they are encouraged to study for masters degrees, with money in school budgets to pay for that continued professional development, he said.
The pressure must be maintained on schools "to deliver for teachers".
Sheerman said the committee had heard "worrying evidence" about Sure Start's future funding.
Balls said the government has guaranteed funding until 2013 but "that is not a committment that has cross-party support".
"The issue is at least as much about commissioning and non-core childrens' services," he said.
Health budgets, for example, should be giving resources to Sure Start, but that is "not yet universally commonplace".
People must be willing to "reshape the way they work, to use childrens' centres to their full extent".
Midwives and health visitors should be working from the centres, but "it is up to PCTs to make that happen".
Balls said "within the post-1945 welfare state" there was a gap at 0 - 5 years, other than post-natal visits and GPs.
"Parents did not get much support."
The aim was always for Sure Start to be a universal service, starting in low income areas.
Sheerman asked if there is also a need for more joined-up services at 14 to 19.
Balls said the challenge is making different departments work more closely.
Graham Stuart (Con, Beverley and Holderness) echoed the previous evidence session when he asked how Balls deals with the contradictions of the role, such as wanting to both decentralise yet prescribe from Whitehall.
Balls argeed with his predecessors that there are contradictions, and said his Tory shadow Michael Gove was in a similar situation.
"We both say we want the national curriculum to have more flexibility, a tradition that goes back to Ken Baker."
The children's secretary said his first run-in with The Sun newspaper when he took the job was over whether or not children at key stage 3 would be taught about Winston Churchill.
His response was that the curriculum specifies teaching about World War 2, and it would be hard to do that without mentioning Churchill.
Deregulation had made teaching more flexible.
Gove also wants more flexibility "but wants to specify what poetry is taught in lessons".
Balls said there is also a contradiction between saying every child must learn phonics, "but it is also our aim is to have more primary schools who opt out entirely and become academies".
Stuart asked about the role of the unions.
Balls said turbulent relationships were a feature of Baker and Blunkett's time in office.
The national curriculum "was born at time of huge strife and conflict" with the unions about about pay and conditions that continued into the 1990s.
"That was in part a reflection of the teaching profession being, in its own, view less professional."
The last ten years have seen a rise in standards and in the training of teachers, Balls said.
The "depth of partnership" between teachers and government has made an important contribution to policy making.
We are now "in a more mature place than ordering from the centre, we expect schools to be responsible for outcomes, but have the confidence to devolve resources to school level".
The focus has shifted from institutions and professions to outcomes for children and the school report card delivers "more child-centred accountability".
Annette Brooke (Lib Dem, Mid Dorset and Poole North) said a range of voices have been critical of Ofsted.
"Is it fit for purpose?" she asked.
Balls said the quango has "gone through change" and now has a broader remit and its new inspection regime is "raising the bar" and moving to a more "risk-based system".
It would be "wrong to go back to silo based inspections," he added.
Balls said he "really pushed the academies programme" because it works, but the model should not be applied to primaries.
Some will be taken over by academies but as maintained schools.
Karen Buck (Lab, Regent's Park and Kensington North) worried that the department had the capacity to "effectively duplicate the role of the education authority" in respect of failing academies.
Balls said he cannot "micro-manage schools" and he has delegated authority to the new young people's learning agency, which has a regional presence supporting academies.
On school admissions, he said he is sceptical about the use of lotteries.
They can be "very destabilising" to children, and he proposed a move to banded admissions, "a combination of proximity but a more mixed intake".
Andrew Pelling (Ind, Croydon Central) asked if it is possible to give more power to parents in admissions.
Balls said the system in London is complex, but in his Normanton constituency 94 per cent of parents got their first choice.
He said that "since late 1980s both governments got us to a much better place" and "you have to be tough from the centre but actually the key to good schools is local leadership".
Asked if he has any regrets about his time in office, Balls said the fact that things take time can be frustrating.
"The agenda for next few years is very rich," he told the committee.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd