EMERGING bloody-nosed from a dreadful week for Labour as a result of Shadow health spokeswoman Harriet Harman's choice of a selective school for her son, Tony Blair today resorts to a bold tactic - that of keeping education high on the political agenda instead of trying to change the subject altogether.

However, despite his and the party's vulnerability to charges of hypocrisy after the Harman row, education is an issue Labour cannot dodge for long anyway if it is to win the votes of "Middle England" which it needs to gain power.

For there dwell the middle-class so-called "aspirational" parents who, just like Ms Harman, want the best schooling for their children.

They are also concerned that what is on offer in the state system is far from the best.

Indeed, it is repeatedly shown in international comparisons to be very much second-best.

Thus, while unsurprisingly saying virtually nothing today about what Labour plans for the remaining selective schools, Mr Blair's proposal, to lure the best graduate teachers to the badly-performing inner-city schools and to promote "fast-tracking" of bright pupils, will have not a few charms for concerned parents - though the latter may clash with the beliefs of some of his party's old-style ideologists.

For, as a potential source for another divisive row in the party on the lines opened by Ms Harman, fast-tracking, or the moving of the most able up a year in their best subjects, can be regarded as just another form of that controversial issue, selection.

The difference, of course, being that it amounts to creaming off the best inside the (comprehensive) school rather than at the (grammar) school gate.

But even if Labour's old-guard levellers may not like this toned-down version of selection, aspirational parents will not complain if fast-tracking does provide their children with better opportunities and goals.

For gifted and hard-working pupils are entitled to both, and to having an education system designed to provide them.

And, for all the resistance or fudging in Labour about selectivity, it is hard to see how that can be achieved, or how the aspirations of concerned parents can be met, without some form of creaming off.

However, it is the majority of pupils and the majority of parents, too, whose needs are being let down at present by our second-best education system, as every performance indicator would suggest.

The debate over which are the best schools and what is best for the brightest children may, as we have seen, have plenty of potential for splits inside Labour and for damaging - and perhaps deserved - mud-slinging from the Tories, but, surely, the real issue is standards overall and improving them for all.

Would that we could have a rational, informed debate, bereft of ideology, to provide answers to the big problem - rather than the piecemeal tinkering and sniping that our politicians indulge in when what is actually at stake is the nation's future.

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