More cash would close the rich/poor divide in education

I've just received the details of what the Liberal Democrat 'Pupil Premium' would mean here. It would allocate around £ 26 million of extra cash to Cheshire schools, which would the funding for disadvantaged pupils to private school levels.

And we can afford it. The whole policy costs £2.5 bn a year, and will be paid for from reforms to tax credits (which will save £1.5bn) and administrative savings in the Department for Education and quangos (which save an additional £1bn).

I'm so glad I'm not in the Labour party! 12 years in power and the inequality between rich and poor gets wider. And it starts in education:

• The poorest children are only half as likely as their better-off classmates to get 5 good GCSEs
• Last year one in three children left primary school without being able to read and write properly
• Nearly 10,000 5-7 year olds are taught in classes so big that they are illegal
• More than half of all applicants accepted to degree courses in 2008 were from the top two social classes

One would expect that from a Tory government which believes, at root, in the class system, But it must be hard for the ordinary Labour party members to see what's been commited in their name.