THERE is, of course, great irony in Tony Blair being asked by the top-performing London Oratory School, to which he sent his children in preference to their local comprehensive, to contribute £45 a month to their education there.

This occurred because the school finds itself some £250,000 short in funding now that Labour has scrapped the grant-maintained status that Margaret Thatcher created for it and many other excellent schools.

But it is nothing short of hypocrisy that Mr Blair wants the best education for his children, but at the same time is prepared to deny it to others.

He is doing this with the hands-off scheme the government has devised for levelling socialist wreckers to shut down the few remaining grammar schools left now that they have killed off the grant-maintained ones.

I can do no better than repeat the words of headmaster Stuart Holt at the annual speech night of the award-winning Clitheroe Royal Grammar School, one of the centres of excellence threatened with closure by the ballots the governments has introduced. "Let's suppose people in Manchester get better cancer treatment because of the work done at the Christie Hospital," said Mr Holt.

"What if I was Prime Minister and said: 'This is unfair. All must get the same treatment. Shut Christie's!' There would be a national scandal.

"Let us suppose the people of the Ribble Valley get a better education for their children as a result of the work done by the staff at Clitheroe Royal Grammar School. You get the point!"

But why should not children who have proven their ability in what's left of the 11-plus, or the vestige of selection the former G.M. schools employed, have the opportunity of a better education - it's not discrimination by class or wealth, but simply recognition that bright children, whatever their background, deserve every encouragement.

It used to be that thousands of working-class children were assisted out of poverty and dead-end lives by the grammar schools and their own hard work.

It is wicked that New Labour will put a stop to that - while the Prime Minister seeks a similar sort of education for his own.

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