First of all, in reply to Mr Johnson, "LEAs still have an important role to play" (January 2), the "crazy" voucher system is running successfully in Sweden and has seen standards rise where the experiment is tried.

The Dutch seem to be following a similar system. For a socialist, like Mr Johnson, anything which takes power away from officials and gives it to parents and teachers is a bad thing.

Far from the poor being disadvantaged, the experience in the US is that the voucher system has been embraced enthusiastically by the poorer parents, who have seen the results in their children.

Those parents have the means to make a choice hitherto available only to the wealthy. The biggest opposition to vouchers in the US came from socialist politicians like Edward Kennedy who sent his children to private schools. One law for rich socialists, another for the rest.

A similar hypocrisy exists in this country with Labour politicians opposing private schools for all but sending their own offspring to such schools. George Orwell wrote Animal Farm with such behaviour in mind.

If a school is so good that it is oversubscribed, there is nothing to stop it taking control of a failing school and repeating its own success story.

This has happened in Sweden. In Britain, poor parents have no choice but to send their children to a failing school if that is the only one available.

It seems to me that socialists like Mr Johnson are more interested in the pursuit of socialist dogma than in the effective education of our children.

The system he supports has failed generations of children. Fewer children of poor parents go to university than was the case 30 years ago.

It is time that the politicians set the people free to make our own choices. Independent schools do not need LEAs or government directives and neither do state schools.

David Lonsdale, Benalmadena Pueblo, Malaga, Saoin