I can't see any process by which competition between private schools for people who can afford to send their children their and publicly funded schools for children whose parents cannot is by itself going to ensure that the standard of provision for disabled children is going to be improved, and that the right of all children to attend schools which are not segregated (by disability, race, wealth etc) is going to be preserved.>P>

And I'm not talking just about the right of excluded children to attend the schools - I'm talking every bit as much about the right of all children not to be educated in a segregationist system.

Children only have one life, and I know that parents can find themselves forced to withdraw children from schools that have gone bad (mostly in my experience from schools that have gone bad largely because of cuts that have forced them to get rid of experienced teachers, because it's cheaper to employ inexperienced ones). This means either private education, or education at home.

But it's one thing to make a choice for your own child, and quite another to imagine that the net effect of all these individual choices is going to be that the school system becomes better through the magic hand of competition. Competition raise standards? Look at the muisic industry. Look at the devastated city centres.

Making things better depends on people working together, and supporting each other, and sharing the burden, and being willing to pay the taxes and put in the effort to ensure that the taxes are spent in the right way. Compassionate,l yes. Even in a sense "conservative" - what we need is something that in many ways might look very old-fashioned. In the way that the music we love is old-fashioned. But it's a million miles away from this brash vulgar monstrosity that uses the label to justify privilege and repression.