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When I talk to teachers they tell me the things they'd most like from any government are a reduction in bureaucracy, support to help ensure good discipline and a reformed Ofsted.

In cutting government, we cut a huge variety of programs, a lot of which I would have liked to see increase, and a lot of which I'd like to see decreased more.

It's been all over the press, and schools are deciding to shut it down. We released a public announcement saying that we had some potential solutions that we were working with, and once we had something concrete we would start implementing it and approach schools.

The biggest barrier we've seen to student progress is this: School policies and practices often prevent good teachers from doing great work and even dissuade some talented Americans from entering the profession. This needs to change.

More time on paperwork means less time spent with students or preparing lessons for students. It is as simple as that. The numerous reforms in the bill will go a long way to free our time of special educators.

My Department has already recognised this and has been working specifically on the technical support issue since January and will offer advice to schools during the Autumn term.

You begin to see that all of these things are connected: The kind of cuts that mean less environmental protection are also the kind of cuts that mean less musical education for the schools and that also mean more overcrowded schools.

There has been a growing consensus across the country - from statehouses to the White House and the halls of Congress - that we need to take dramatic steps to improve our secondary schools.

We will cut programs, we will try to rein in the size of the bureaucracy. We will bring federal pay scales that have become so exaggerated into line with market rates.

We need to increase education budgets.