A Chamber full of millionaires votes to dash the life-chances of 1,800 poor children

Rob C

Well said but what a tragedy for those kids. This type of project is long overdue here too, but again the militant minority would bully/blackmail the majority and prevent it. Despite a combined annual income under £15,000, we pay for our son to have private education - with all the hardship that brings. As parents however, we both passionately believe it is our no.1 duty to provide him the best start and education we can. The state cannot offer that. I hope that he will go to grammar school at 11, but failing that we will continue to struggle and pay for private school. (Watch out the politician that tries to remove the Grammar Schools!) Private schools educate better and at less cost than the state and if I were PM, all schools would be private, run by governors and free of state intervention! Roll on the day that SOMEONE has the bottle to do something right and put the children above politics. Lets face it, with the tax burden they are going to inherit, they will need every skill and opportunity we can give them. It took 60 years, but George Orwell's 'prophecies' were spot-on - dumbing down everyone to the same level is not progress... The governments job is to ensure equal opportunity for all and a voucher system and private schools would be the best possible way to achieve that.

TGF UKIP

Even Juan Williams, and no greater Dem headbanger than he, spoke solidly and unambiguously in favour of the voucher scheme on last weekend's Beltway Boys.

I'm afraid it's exactly the same over here - unless Dave amd Mikie are prepared to take on the teaching unions and the teacher training establishment, which they have so far conspicuously failed to indicate they are, then all their blather is for precisely nowt. Surprise, surprise!

Susan Hill

Just what they did here when Labour came in and scrapped te Assistedplaces scheme, there by preventing, to date, two school generations from getting a decent education. I wish Ed Ballsup would ask himself why Jade Goody has been selling her dying weeks to leave enough nmoney to give her 2 sons a private education. America is now going down the same route and condemnding poor children to life in the ghettoes and certainly to what is arguably an even worse state ''education ''than our own.

porkbelly

Dear Leader's children, naturally, go to a posh private school in Washington.

Alf Tupper

Bollocks. Tokenism.

If all this meant anything, we would not be allowing such grotesque differentials in salaries.

This is all a way of making rich people feel less bad about there being so many poor people - whilst staying rich.

Fergus Pickering

I couldn't care less how America fails to educate its children - none of our business, not our problem etc. But of course Democrats equals Labour, doesn't it? And teaching unions are the same the whole world over, obscurantist and stupid, the enemies of progress> Michael Gove, as he girds up his loins adnwhatever else needs girding up, should remember that the hydra he is fighting is a WORLDWIDE socialist conspiracy to stamp on the faces of the poor for ever. Oh, and it shows Obama for what he is, a doctrinaire apparatchik who would be at home in our present government, Minister for Socual Inclusion or something, all fur coat and no knickers as my granny used to say. She saved up her pennies and sent my father to a public school, Bromsgroveit was. My father was fortunate enough to be educating his children in the fifties and early sixties. He could rely on the free schools and the cheap schools of Edinburgh. He couldn't now. But I was lucky too. I live in Kent where....

Anan

Why should the taxpayer pay for certain selected children to go to top private schools while the children of those same middle class tax payers have to make do with a rubbish state school, simply because their parents earn a little more than the "poor" cut-off point? "Equality" means including everyone in good education (and healthcare etc), not just the poorest.