A college education shows a man how little other people know.

As long as she is talented enough and passionate about doing it herself then I will be happy and support her. I think I will be sensible - my parents said I could only do it if I got my education and so I had something to fall back on.

After completing a Delaware State education, they were afforded opportunities beyond anything they might have imagined - and they opened doors for themselves that surely would have remained closed if they only had a high school education.

By climbing a steeper road, the value and appreciation Delaware State students took and continue to take from their education and their experiences is just as great, if not greater, than students attending ivy league schools.

Delaware State began as a school bent on service - teaching education, social services and nursing.

They were often the first students in their family to go to college and the very idea of higher education was still foreign to them. They had to make a conscious and often difficult decision to come to college.

This is a value-added college education if I have heard one described. And what is the most remarkable about Delaware State University graduates - is they just keeping giving back.

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.

Unfortunately, the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.

The big shift in approach on education that we are taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.