AS a parent, how would you feel about your child sharing a classroom with a disruptive hooligan?

And, as a taxpayer, how do you feel about forking out to pay someone a handsome wage from public funds to admit such sorts into East Lancashire schools?

No, I am not making this up -- seriously, Blackburn with Darwen Council's education authority is currently advertising a post with a salary rising to more than £24,000 a year for a so-called Reintegration Manager whose task is "to meet the challenge of finding and maintaining placements in mainstream schools for those pupils who have been permanently excluded."

Tossing aside the jargon, this means this official will be setting out to put back into schools -- and keep them there -- not the occasional naughty nuisances, but kids whose behaviour was so bad that they had previously been expelled for good.

What's the sense in this?

None at all -- if we are to heed the warning issued only two months ago by the head teacher of a school that this self-same education authority was able to hold up as a beacon of excellence to Prime Minister Tony Blair himself when he came to East Lancashire.

Remember Michael Humphreys, head of Our Lady and St John High School in Blackburn, slamming the government for forcing schools to admit seriously-disruptive pupils and calling the policy a "recipe for disaster"?

Much of Mr Humphreys' concern was, quite rightly, about the effect that the compulsory admission of badly-behaved louts had on teacher recruitment -- when, currently, staff are so disenchanted by abuse and indiscipline from pupils that even 'good' schools like his have difficulty in attracting new teachers.

Personally, I think that restoration of the cane would solve the discipline problem at a stroke, or six. But if, in these enlightened times, that is not possible without hurting the rights as well as the persons of the classroom yobs, is it not also time that some concern was given to the rights of the decent, willing-to-learn pupils who are entitled to not have their education and opportunities jeopardised by a disruptive element? Is any thought being given to the needs of the good kids in this policy of parachuting yobs into their classrooms -- against serious concern and good advice from an already-disaffected teaching profession and against plain common sense?

It seems not. But, thanks to the government's soft 'social inclusion' policy towards the manifestly anti-social, it won't be long before someone in East Lancashire is on 24 grand a year for jeopardising the rights of those who want to learn and those who want to teach them in peace. Madness!