[James]

I was listening to a debate on the radio the other day about this, and it annoyed me a bit how some of the contributers dismissed Secondary Modern type education.

Skills like woodworking, metalwork, cookery and gardening, which were brought up as typical examples, are great skills to have. You can be highly creative with those.

I think there is a problem in that MPs and opinion formers like newspaper journalists and other media presenters are generally all people who have benefited personally from an academic education, so they assume it is the best path for everyone, which is not the case.

Even in the Labour party now, most of the MPs are middle-class and university educated.