NOTHING other than hypocrisy explains the government choosing education as a major election battleground - as with its promises to raise standards and bring back grammar schools - when, at the same time, it is condemning thousands of children to slums schools that fall foul of its own standards yardstick.

And as a shock report today reveals that schools nationwide need £3.2billion spending on them over the next five years just to keep existing buildings open, we learn yet again of how Lancashire's children suffer most of all from this dangerous folly of under-investment.

For, as the authority with most schools in the country and one that, year after year, the government has denied sufficient cash and borrowing powers to to replace its out-of-date ones, it is now in the position of having, in effect, an 800-year waiting list for new school buildings.

This is, of course, proof of the lesson that the longer the problem goes on, the harder and more expensive it becomes to cure.

But why on earth will the government not learn it?

The shameful answer is that tax cuts come before education - and this vote-buying will be at the expense of a decent education for thousands of Lancashire children who are still being taught in Victorian conditions.

And not only do these old schools fail any sensible standard for decent learning and teaching conditions, they actually fall below the criteria set by the government's own national curriculum.

Yet, it is content for that to be the case for years and years to come.

Just how can the government pretend to be championing better education when, for its own political ends, it carries on betraying children by the thousand?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.