Normally, it is really rather tiresome when a politician is pilloried in the media for choosing to send their children to a private school above the local state schools. There’s even an argument that if you can afford to send your kid to a fee-paying school, then at least it is one less pressure in the great London school places crush.
But one thing worth mulling over about Nick Clegg’s admission on LBC yesterday that he might send his eldest son to an independent school if the school lottery doesn’t go his way is that the Deputy Prime Minister has tried very, very hard since coming into office not to criticise state schools and teachers. Those close to him have made clear that they are uncomfortable with the way Michael Gove provokes the teaching unions by calling teachers ‘whingers’, believing that these sorts of criticisms are the ‘last thing the government needs’ when it is trying to keep teachers on side with its major education reforms.
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