"Children themselves know they are being cheated. Ultimately we owe it to our children. They are in school for 190 days a year. Every moment they spend learning is precious. If a year goes by and they are not being stretched and excited, that blights their life."

"What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities, so that head teachers can decide what's truly important, because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads."

"The single most important thing in a child's performance is the quality of the teacher. Making sure a child spends the maximum amount of time with inspirational teachers is the most important thing."

"The accumulation of cultural capital - the acquisition of knowledge - is the key to social mobility."

"Writing, I'm convinced, should be a subversive activity - frowned on by the authorities - and not one cooed over and praised beyond common sense by some teacher."

"My daughter Lila loves the smell of gasoline - she always says, 'Mummy, keep the door open,' when I'm filling up the car. I've heard it is one of the most preferred scents in the world - maybe that's something to study for my next fragrance!"

"I must have got my detailed, obsessive streak from my father, who was an English teacher, because my mother wasn't like me at all."

"I was a smart kid, but I hated school."