In her first Commons appearance as education secretary, Ruth Kelly has indicated her support for a cross-party determination to drive up school standards.

Following her promotion to the Cabinet in the wake of David Blunkett's resignation, Kelly was welcomed to her post by all sides of the Commons.

But her day got off to a rocky start when the minister was forced to defend her links to a Catholic conservative movement called Opus Dei.

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, she said that her religious belief should not be an issue "at all".

"I am in politics because I have a strong belief in the equal worth of every child," she said.

"I have a private spiritual life and I have a faith. It is a private spiritual life and I don't think it is relevant to my job. I am here as a Catholic."

Congratulated

Later, in education questions, Kelly was congratulated on her promotion by Conservative frontbencher Tim Collins.

"As she and I have something in common, we both have young children, I'm sure our absolute commitment to raising educational standards for everyone in this country is shared and is total," said the shadow education secretary.

He said that to tackle truancy children should have "a disciplined environment where they feel safe".

And he questioned why, if she thought head teachers should be able to exclude disruptive pupils, ministers were blocking legislation that would give them that power.

Kelly responded: "As a parent myself, I share his objective that there is good discipline in the classroom, that there is good teaching and that children learn in a good learning environment."

She departed from the apparent consensus, however, to lambaste Tory education policies.

"Over the next few weeks and months I intend to draw attention to the Conservative policies which will wreak havoc on our plans for schools, for school discipline, our measures to tackle truancy, on our measures to open up universities," she told MPs.

Her response was described by Collins as "very disappointing".

Lib Dems

For the Liberal Democrats, Phil Willis also welcomed her to the post.

"No member in this house has got any value in seeing a secretary of state fail in this key policy area," he said.

And he called for parents to be "involved in what happens in schools" as one way of tackling issues such as truancy.

Kelly returned to the cross-party consensus following a question from Conservative right-winger Andrew Mackay.

He had said: "As there is nothing more unacceptable in our schools than bullying, and as there should be zero tolerance, does the secretary of state really think that just having an anti-bullying week and an anti-bullying charter is enough? Do we not need to have much more?"

But Kelly said that MPs "may be surprised that I do agree to a large extent" with the statement.

"We have to tackle bullying, we have to create culture in which every child is valued, we must have zero tolerance of bullying," she said.