Here’s a thought about child care: what about giving parents some choice?

George Bernard Shaw made no bones about the merits of schooling: it was, he felt, a way for parents to offload the care of their children onto other people, and he was right. The rich do this systematically, of course, in delegating their children to boarding schools, but for the rest of us, Ed Miliband’s plan to extend childcare provision by obliging primary schools to take in our children from eight in the morning to six in the evening will have a good deal of appeal. At least for parents it will; if I were a teacher, I’d take a dim view of having babysitting added to my other duties.

But as Ed says, ‘…the cost of a nursery place is now the highest in history, at more than £100 a week to cover part-time hours. And average costs for a full-time place are now rising up to £200 or even more.’