Well, this one was clearly a really easy one to write - no struggle with creative imagination here, what with the bulk of it being words I have used so many times over the years that you can probably find them repeated about a dozen times on this website. But then, it was quite possibly the first time any of the hundreds of thousands of listeners had heard it, so that's OK. The important thing is not to ignore what is important just because you've said it so many times that you are boring yourself.

School's out - or just about. And no matter what the exam results, most of those involved believe that what they experience outside school will prove more important to their lives than what they learn inside. We all know that a school syllabus only deals with a tiny fraction of the complexities of the interpersonal relationships, social skills, individual yearnings and fulfillment that we think of as real life.

Good education should be as complex as life itself, but with an election in the air, debate has been reduced, as ever, to a few simple code words and phrases marking the tip of an iceberg of assumptions. Politicians of all parties using the same language, all devoted to a selfless quest for what's best for each individual student, as well as the nation at large.

But what are the personal qualities that we truly value? Which of society's standards do we really wish to raise? Nearly twenty years ago, the World Conference on Islamic Education discussed the crisis in western secular systems due to our virtual exclusion of moral values from the curriculum.

It highlighted the difference between education and instruction, education involving the complete growth of an individual personality, whereas training for some mental or physical task is really just instruction. So a well qualified doctor or lawyer, engineer or accountant, may be ill mannered, unjust, dissatisfied, unhappy, and obviously only half educated.

In well educated people we see their "goodness" shining through. They are outward looking, modifying their understanding and behaviour with what they learn from society. For each individual is also part of a community, and both are necessary to the survival of each other. Unfettered individualism means anarchy and systemic breakdown, whereas excessive social control leads to stagnation, degeneration, and violent social upheaval.

Education preserves social structures, and transmits basic values to the next generation, while nurturing the variety of human needs and interests, helping us achieve a quality of life which satisfies emotional and spiritual yearnings as well as intellectual. How we understand this quality of life, this aim of education, will determine what our education system provides.