We are living in glorious times. Our children are ever better qualified, their future – and ours – ever brighter. 99% of all school leavers have four A levels or more. The numbers of those claiming benefit after leaving school have gone down and down. We confidently look forward to a time when everyone goes to university and no one is claiming benefits. The super-heads we have appointed to rescue the very few schools that were failing have utterly transformed those institutions. Their students come to school enthusiastic and leave enthusiastic. Our policies have empowered such wonderful dedicated heads and their extraordinarily talented and hard working staff, who have received the best training, training of hitherto only dreamt of standard, to maximise their potential, to turn chaff into wheat, to feed the hungry, to top league tables and to put this country at the very head of academic achievement.

There remains, however, an almost insignificant minority of failures: schools where the heads are weak, where they fail to sack their incompetent teachers, and, as we know, there are few people more incompetent than incompetent teachers, teachers under whom little or nothing of value gets done. Indeed it is worse than that. This tiny minority is a drain on our resources: they damage your children, they ruin our figures. We have to extirpate these parasites, weed them out, drag them kicking and screaming from the soil they are bent on holding on to and destroying. If we do not act now this country will go to the dogs. They, and they alone, are responsible for the upbringing of our extraordinarily talented and hard working young people, and we must make an example of them. As the first step in this process one in every five teachers in all schools will be taken out and shot. Once this is done the country can go forward and enjoy the fruits of our brave and radical policies, including, I am delighted to announce, the new school-leaving age of twenty-five.