Parents 'could get helping hand'

The Scottish Labour leader-elect said the idea had been floated by Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, and deserved serious study.

"One of the interesting ideas that was floated by IDS ... was looking at a scheme in the United States where you almost had a classroom assistant for the home - a granny in the home, somebody who was a bit of support in young parents in bringing up their kids," she said.

"I think that's a proper area for political parties to be looking at, so we get alongside parents in bringing up their children.

"Because we all benefit at the end of the day and, if you leave children with no guidance in their first ten years, then all the rest of us are the losers for the rest of their adult lives."

Ms Alexander floated the idea during an interview with Simon Mayo on Radio 5 Live.

She also signalled a possible shift in Labour thinking on how education is funded, arguing that, after an unprecedented programme of school-building, parents were more interested in what happened inside schools than the state of the buildings.

"I think there are policies that we need to renew," she said. "Building new schools is not enough. We need to be much more concerned about what's happening inside those schools.

"Lots and lots of the money that we give to education gets locked up in 32 different education authorities in Scotland, rather than getting out to the schools, and I think we need to look at that."

Ms Alexander also revealed her "great heroine" was Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the US president Franklin D Roosevelt.