I am bitterly disappointed that Mike Tomlinson is the latest of a long line of well-heeled folk who are unprepared to support inner-city schools by sending their children to them.
The likes of Blair, Harman, Abbott and now Tomlinson are highly skilled at the rhetoric of inclusion so long as their offspring can be included somewhere else where the standard is already guaranteed. Their confidence trick is justified by the parents’ mantra about getting the “best” education for their children.
This Thatcherite position liberates middle-class parents from the need to consider other, social responsibilities, including endorsement of local schools.
But when the great and the good make pronouncements on inner-city schools, without having the personal conviction to endorse them, can we trust them?
Paul Howard
54 Margery Park Road
Forest Gate, London E7
