In normal circumstances it might be flattering for a man of 40 to be described as “a teenager”. For Ed Balls, the Secretary of State for Children, Families and Schools, the designation is less welcome. Mr Balls has spent much time of late along with other young members of the Cabinet (“the teenagers”) debating the merits of an early general election against more experienced colleagues (“the greybeards”). He has thus been blamed in his party for ramping up a November 1 poll then rejecting it at the last minute. Now that that decision has been taken, it is imperative that Mr Balls dedicates himself to advocating the right agenda on education. An abandoned election is one thing. An abandoned department is quite another.

There has been much talk in Gordon Brown’s circle about the need to set out a “vision” for the future. This has been coupled with the desire to engage in “consultation” with various supposed “stakeholders” across the spectrum. Yet vision is about leadership, not lengthy discussions. If Mr Balls talks too much and to the wrong people, he will discover that the two years or more before an election finally arrives have left him no time to demonstrate actual delivery.

The essential challenges have already been identified for him, not least by Christine Gilbert, the admirably candid chief inspector of schools. An initially effective drive to improve numeracy and literacy in primary schools has become moribund. The transition between primary and secondary schools is mismanaged in a manner which means that boys, particularly, make less progress than they should between the ages of 11 and 14. Lord Adonis has been engaged in a one-man crusade to improve secondary education via the creation of city academies. But there is the sense that, even here, increased numbers of these new schools are being traded against a diminished degree of autonomy for them from their local authorities.

In place of a reasonably coherent strategy for schools that emerged at the end of the Blair era there is now much emphasis on “personalised learning”. Mr Brown and Mr Balls need to recognise the limitations of this fuzzy vision. There is a role for such an approach in primary schools that have a small number of pupils overseen by one teacher and an assistant. It has much less merit in secondary schools, which are far larger and where numerous subject teachers will be in contact with a student. It is not a substitute for a rigorous concentration on standards and a diversity of provision. Mr Balls has won £250 million more in public money from the Chancellor this week to fund this emphasis of personalised learning. He should think carefully before spending it.

For if he does not articulate a clear vision for schools, there are plenty of others in the educational world who will do it for him. Their instincts were set out in Community Soundings, the first of 32 independent reports into the state of primary education. It showed the contempt that many teachers have for external tests, outside inspection and the national curriculum. Teaching assistants could barely contain their hostility to parents who were deemed either too obsessed with their offspring’s performance or too indifferent to their development. It was only the children themselves who saw why numeracy, literacy and testing were valuable. Mr Balls is a dynamic and intelligent individual. Yet if he wants to get anything done he has to take the risk of unpopularity with sectional interests and drive through real change, not engage in endless consultation.