The Labour party and the Lib Dems are competing with each other to discover which party can spend the most taxpayers’ money on the most useless project.

Spending on state education is higher today than it has ever been, while nearly half of the pupils leave school after eleven years of full time compulsory schooling unable to read, write or count efficiently.

I can at least count sufficiently accurately to know that this does not represent value for money.

Now Labour have announced they will spend an additional £4.8billion. and the Lib Dems £7billion more. This is a scandalous misappropriation of public money. 

Labour say this increase will be paid for by increasing corporation tax from the current 19% to 26% by 2021, But even at its present level, corporation tax is far too high and a blight on industry and commerce everywhere. Corbyn and his gang ought to be made to understand that exorbitant business taxes aren’t just a wonderful example of socialists’ politics of envy and their obsession with bashing the bosses: companies employ workers – a few of whom might even be foolish enough to vote Labour  – and every corporation tax rise means more workers will get the sack.

A further increase in teachers’ salaries is included in Labour’s calculations. I would say teachers are generously paid already compared with most other workers. A head teacher (outside London) can earn as much as £108K – more, given extra allowances for special responsibilities. Senior teachers receive up to £59K and heads of department £38K. The average pay for a classroom teacher is £33K and even unqualified teachers receive £26K. There is a pension scheme more generous than most others can dream about. All this while a teacher spends 195 days each year in school when most workers turn up to the job on 241 days annually.

State schools are not only educationally incompetent and intellectually abysmal: they are also chaotic, violent and dangerous.

A recent survey by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) showed that four out of ten teachers had been physically assaulted by children over the previous year. More than three quarters said they had been pushed or shoved, around half were kicked or had had an object such as a piece of furniture thrown at them, and more than a third had been punched. Just under half said pupil behaviour gets worse year on year; and the figures back them up. According to the Department for Education 18,970 pupils at primary and secondary schools were temporarily excluded in 2013-2014 because of physical attacks on teachers and other adults – obstruction, jostling, biting, kicking, hair-pulling – compared with 17,190 the previous year. There is some dispute about the number of assaults in more recent years, but all available surveys reveal that these have increased still further. Three-quarters of trainee and newly-qualified teachers are considering leaving the profession, according to a 2015 ATL survey. Of those, 25% said challenging pupil behaviour was the reason. Meanwhile, a 2014 joint survey by the ATL and ITV News found that more than a quarter of teachers had faced aggression from a student’s parents or carers in the past year.

Does anyone think this moronic,  violent shambles should be handed even more of our money?