Alan Milburn

And then when things picked up, they turned the tap back on, and young people came into the employment market again.

But if 61% of these people aren't in the labour market, aren't in the market for jobs, you've got a very different phenomenon now.

And what you say about skills is right, which is obviously literacy and numeracy are core skills.

Without that, you're being stuffed in life.

So focus on academic standards is really important.

But equally nowadays, we've got to have communication skills.

You've got to be able to collaborate.

You've got to have agility because work's changing.

You're not in one job for life anymore.

All of that's gone.

And AI will transform that even more, as we know, over time.

So the question is, is the balance right in what schools are doing?

And I think a lot of people, not everybody, thinks that maybe that balance isn't quite right.

And I guess the final point is that...

You know, I always, look, I came from, like you, you know, I came from, you know, I grew up in, first of all, in Toulon, County Durham, a little mining town, and then West End of Newcastle, and lots of sort of really very, very poor kids, including me, but everybody had potential.

Everybody had something.

Everybody had something.

And what you can't have is a school system that sets up a cohort of youngsters to believe, like you were saying, that they're failures, they're not good enough.

So how can we get that unlocked in each and every one of them to be able to realise their potential?

That's the critical thing.