Sound your horn for the electric revolution

Such inventive playing of the system is one reason for the anger that many parents will feel today on hearing that their childen have not been given a place at their chosen school.

Despite stiff competition, education is the greatest generator of hypocrisy in middle-class London. We pretend to have a comprehensive system and pose as anti-elitist radicals when we use it. All the pseudo-egalitarian language hides the fact that places in the best comprehensives are up for sale.

There was a grimly hilarious row in Muswell Hill last year after the head of (excellent) Fortismere School wanted to give it foundation status and make it more like a grammar. Middle-class parents were horrified. They had paid hundreds of thousands extra to buy a house in Fortismere's catchment area. If their children were not given places automatically, their investment would be jeopardised.

Thus the loudest supporters of keeping Fortismere "comprehensive" were those most able to use their financial muscle to force their children into its classrooms.

If they were sincere in their support of the comprehensive ideal, they would have had no problem with lotteries for places. There is no more egalitarian selection method. But the middle classes will no more support selection by lottery than by academic ability for fear their children will lose out. Ed Balls knows it, and yesterday backed away from lotteries declaring they were a "very last resort" and "really arbitrary". He doesn't believe in the comprehensive system either.

Wouldn't it be better if he and we could be honest about education? We might admit that the university admission statistics reveal that potentially gifted working- and lower-middle-class children are being failed because they cannot get into good schools. We could then build a school system which selected them on ability and gave them the same education expected by the professional classes.