text: Early signs show that such investment is tackling the boy-girl divide in attainment. Only two years of extra investment show a significant increase in boys' attainment. They have not quite caught the girls up, but their attainment has improved. That is also true of the girls, but the gap has been closed to some extent. That is an interesting early result from the school. I look forward to monitoring it further in future.
  In 1997, Derbyshire had perhaps the worst record of key stage 1 class sizes of more than 30. It was appalling. Throughout the country, 477,000 children at key stage 1 were taught in classes of more than 30. That number increased every year for 11 years under the previous Government. We tackled class size head on. In September, not one child at key stage 1 in my constituency was in a class of more than 30 pupils. I believe that that applies to the whole of Derbyshire. That is a tremendous achievement, which brings genuine boons and advantages to the teachers, because it helps teachers to teach and children to learn, and it helps relationships, not least those between the adults and the children in the class.
  Speaking of adults in classrooms, when I was visiting primary schools last week I was impressed by the number of adults around. Although one or two were parents who had come in voluntarily to help with reading schemes and so on, there were more educational care officers and classroom assistants than I had seen before. There was an altogether more thriving mixed adult-child community than I had previously seen in primary schools, and that is being welcomed by teachers, heads, governors and everyone else involved.