Letter: Parental choice may swamp good schools

Sir: The Government's reported plans to enlarge schools popular with parents and close the failing ones would mark a further step in the Labour Party's adoption of the former right-wing agenda. This would be a type of voucher system, to which Sir Keith Joseph announced he was "intellectually attracted" on becoming Education Secretary in the early 1980s.

I was one of the small Civil Service team who worked with him on the search for a practicable implementation, and can testify to the great determination and rigour that he brought to the task. However, even Sir Keith was defeated by the practicalities of a scheme in which, essentially, public funds would be squandered on enlarging parents' favourite schools to the point where they then ceased to be attractive.

ROGER MORGAN

Epsom, Surrey