Kelly: Hailing Labour's education record

Labour has sought to highlight its flagship education policies as polling day fast approaches.

Education secretary Ruth Kelly stressed the key campaign theme on Wednesday as the party tried to avoid the last few hours of the elections being dominated by Iraq and trust in Tony Blair.

Kelly said Labour would do more for both struggling and gifted students in a third term.

Emphasising the need to boost basic literacy skills, as well as stretching the most able pupils, the education secretary said extra resources and personalised learning would allow for small group teaching and "catch up" in secondary schools.

"We have already made great strides in improving standards - with record GCSE and A-level results and the third most literate 10-year-olds in the world," Kelly said.

"But I am not satisfied with that. Too many children arrive at secondary school below the expected standards in maths and English. That holds them back and can disrupt the education of other pupils when they play up in class.

"Because of our investment, we already have 32,500 more teachers and 128,000 more support staff helping to drive up standards in our schools. But if people value Labour's investment and reform, the need to vote for it on Thursday."

Late

However Liberal Democrat spokesman Phil Willis said his party was being imitated just 24 hours before polling day.

"It has taken years of campaigning by the Liberal Democrats for Labour to finally realise that small classes make a huge difference," he said.

"It's not targets, testing and league tables that improve a child's education, it's smaller class sizes and high quality teaching. 

"The Liberal Democrats would reduce class sizes for infants to an average of 20, lower class sizes for juniors to an average of 25, and guarantee that in the core subjects of English, maths, science, modern languages and ICT all secondary school children will be taught by suitably qualified teachers."