Education is about more than knowledge. It's vital to our future economic success locally and nationally.  A person with qualifications is much more likely to have a job - with 89% employment rate in the UK for a person with a higher education qualification, 79% for upper secondary education but only 53% for those below these levels. And a more qualified person gets more pay too. If someone with a good upper secondary education earns, say, £100, a person with a higher education qualification gets £158, while people who have not achieved good upper secondary qualifications have to make do with £67.

We do well as a country, yet we are simply not achieving our full potential. Not socially, not personally, not economically. Our achievements - nationally and individually - have not been helped by the level of the skills and knowledge we have. Britain lies in the middle of the international tables for educational qualifications. 30% of our population have few or no qualifications. Another 40% have some qualifications, yet could benefit from higher and stronger qualifications.

In this, of course, our schools have an important role to play. We have some great schools locally but let's face it, we struggle to give every parent their first choice school, and we do face issues of discipline. We plan a revolution in education including planning new school creating over 220,000 new places to help meet demand. We will shift the balance of power in the classroom from the pupil back to the teacher, and signifcantly we will divert additional resources to children from dissadvantaged backgrounds  to help give them the earliest possible chance to get the best schools and best teaching.

I believe Enfield deserves a fairer deal, and I will work hard to ensure that we get our fair share of this plan to improve the educational opportunities for all our Enfield children.

There is a much wider agenda here too. We should have a revolution in apprenticeships, making diplomas work, increasing the autonomy of colleges and setting vocational qualifications with employers in the driving seat.

Nick believes that skills training must be aimed at what employers want so that a person can get a job. It would make a real difference in Enfield where the skills base is not as strong as we would like to see.