British Prime Minister Tony Blair has admitted that the pupil-teacher ratio has increased in secondary schools since his party has been in government. He said there had been a 0.3 per cent rise in the number of pupils for each secondary school teacher throughout the country since 1997, but that the Labour election manifesto had stated that the priority was to reduce primary and infant school class sizes. A spokesman for education secretary David Blunkett said that the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools has fallen from 27.7 to 27.1 with the greatest drop being in the target five- to seven-year-old group.