Nationalising children

When Ruth Kelly became Education Secretary last December, one of her female colleagues, angry at having been passed over for promotion, denounced her as a ‘cow’ who insisted on skipping Commons debates in order to spend time with her young children. In fact, in her dedication to family life, Ms Kelly seemed a refreshing change from the archetypal Blair Babe who views motherhood as a kind of lazy option for those women who lack the talent to run a small government department.

But perhaps the strain of rushing home every evening to read Topsy and Tim is proving too much. This week Ruth Kelly announced that she wishes schools to extend their opening hours from six and a half hours a day to ten or eleven. Just one thing is certain about this proposal: it isn’t being done in the children’s interest. You can almost hear the cries of relief uttered by the working mums of school-age children.