“nearly all” children are involved in comprehensive education, in that the

majority pass through what are described as comprehensive schools, but

certainly not all.

Now I know you can read too much into international league tables, but I do
think it is interesting, and not entirely coincidental, that in countries which
have consistently been near the top of them, such as Finland and Canada,
there is barely a private sector worth the name.

Here, seven per cent of our children attend private fee-paying schools. That
is the choice, and the right, of their parents to send them there, and to pay
for the privilege of what they presumably see as a better education than
their children will get in the state sector, funded by what they already pay in
taxation. But it is surely at least reasonable to ask why all other taxpayers
should subsidise those choices?

Politics, and especially government, are also about choices. Often very
difficult choices. And there is no doubt in my mind that if Labour replace
this government, during whose terms I can think of literally nothing that has
improved, and much that has got worse, they will be inheriting an
economic, social, cultural and security situation far worse than we did