City MP Mark Lancaster has sent a broadside across Secretary of State for Education Ed Balls bows over the mountain of guidance and paperwork that has been dropped on teachers by the Government. The exchange came during Education questions in the House of Commons on Monday when Mr Lancaster asked Mr Balls “Can the Secretary of State estimate how many pages of guidance his Department has issued to teachers in the past 10 years and tell the House whether he considers it sufficient?”.

The Secretary of State replied by admitting that he had no idea but was trying to drive up standards.

After the exchange Mark Lancaster said;

“I was with local teachers on last Friday and the one thing that kept coming up was the amount of paperwork and guidance that they were being sent, one teacher even admitted that they had given up reading it all there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.”

“It’s high time Government stopped trying to tell teachers how to teach and just let them get on and do it, we should trust our teachers not dictate to them.”