WHEN in January, the British public discovered that little Joe Dromey, son of the Labour shadow health minister Harriet Harman, was attending a selective, grant maintained grammar school 10 miles from his home, the House of Commons and the Labour Party were thrown into convulsions.

Irish parents could only wonder at the furore and sympathise with Harriet Harman, who said that in choosing to send her son to St Olave's, Orpington, Kent, she was acting in the best interests of her child. To most of us, the fact that a politician could be castigated for choosing a particular school for her child seemed absurd and the fact that education in Britain had become a political football, was a source of amazement.

On the Labour side there were calls for Harman's resignation and the chairman of the party's education committee, George Steinberg, resigned in protest against her stance. He described her action as hypocritical and against Labour Party education policy - the party is opposed to selective education.

Meanwhile the Tories made great political capital out of the affair, which enabled them to label Labour's education policy as divisive and contradictory - allowing choice for the front bench but removing choice from everyone else.

The news of Harman's decision raised the temperature of the debate on selective education which has been ongoing in England and Wales during the last 16 years of Conservative rule. The arguments in favour of comprehensive education and against selection are compelling. Social stigma apart, selection on academic ability or aptitude creams off the most able students and interferes with the social mix. Good teachers and motivated parents move away, making it difficult for non selective schools to maintain standards. Falling numbers mean reduced budgets, schools descend into apathy and the so called "sink schools" are born.

However, critics of comprehensive education argue that bright students lose out since it fails to cater for their needs. Although most children in Britain are educated in comprehensive schools recent surveys show a majority in favour of a return to selection. But, according to observers, many of these surveys contain loaded questions.

"Of course if you ask parents `would you like your child to receive a grammar school education?' they are going to say yes, says one educator. But the reality is that, faced with a system that creams off the top 25 per cent, they would be unwilling to take the chance that their children would end up with the bottom 75 per cent. In affluent, leafy suburbs, where students' parents are in the professional classes, comprehensive education works very well.

Education has climbed to the top of the political agenda in Britain because both the Labour and the Conservative parties realise that in order to win the next election, they must win the support of the middle classes.

A major concern of these voters is the quality of their children's education. There is a great disparity among state schools in Britain. Many middle class parents go to enormous lengths to ensure that their children attend schools with good academic records - they will even take on huge mortgages and move house in order to live close to good schools. Other parents - even those who were themselves educated in the state sector but believe that standards have declined - are willing to sacrifice their lifestyles so that their children can be educated privately. Under Margaret Thatcher, the independent education sector which was previously in decline, expanded. Today seven per cent of children in Britain are educated privately.

Many of the independent schools are highly selective and, unsurprisingly, they have excellent academic records. Pressure to gain places at these schools and at selective state schools, particularly in London, is intense. Children as young as 10 may be taking up to six separate entrance exams.

AND even five year olds are being selected for expensive prep schools. If they fail to get into certain schools at this stage, say frantic parents, their chances of gaining admission to any of the top London second level schools are negligible. A high proportion of independently educated students gain places at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Most of the top jobs in Britain are still filled by Oxbridge graduates.

The decision by Tony Blair to send his son to a grant maintained school and his support for Harman is seen by observers to represent a nod in the direction of those parents who favour selective education and who fear for the removal of grant maintained and grammar schools if Labour win the election.

The story of British education in recent decades has many of the hallmarks of a best selling novel - power, money and class.

Back in the 1970s there was broad consensus on education. The 11 plus examinations, which creamed off the top 25 per cent of children into grammar schools and labelled the rest as failures, banning them to secondary modern schools, was deemed to be an unfair and unreliable method of assessing academic ability. Comprehensive education was introduced throughout England and Wales during the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was resisted by only a few Conservative councils which retained a small number (116) of selective grammar schools.

Margaret Thatcher came to power promising government spending cuts in 1979. In the world of education, much of the 1980s was characterised by budget cuts and teacher pay disputes, set against a background of increasing employer dissatisfaction with an ill educated, poorly trained and unprofessionally managed workforce. Something had to be done. The 1988 Education Reform Act struck a number of chords close to Thatcher's heart: in an effort to improve standards, competition between schools, market forces and parental choice were to become part of the education system and local government powers would be curtailed.

The ramifications of the 1988 Act and subsequent financial cutbacks have caused chaos in the education system. There has been a huge reduction in the educational support and advisory services provided by Local Education Authorities (LEAs), many of which have been contracted out, others have been abolished.

SCHOOL adventure centres owned by inner city authorities and school playing fields have been sold off. Musical education has suffered and local authorities now charge for peripatetic music teachers. Many county orchestras have disappeared and school library and museum services too, have been adversely affected.

Schools now have to manage their own budgets and in order to do so are forced to make teachers who are at the top of the salary scale redundant. Class sizes are increasing because two classes are often combined to save on a teacher's salary. Out of a total of 3.5 million primary school children in England and Wales, almost half are in classes of more than 30 and 18,000 are in classes of more than 40, according to a spokesperson for the National Union of Teachers (NUT).

The system has also been fragmented by the introduction of city technology colleges, specialist schools and the grant maintained schools. Only 1,080 out of 25,000 schools in England and Wales have opted for grant maintained status and in order to encourage more schools to opt out the government has provided them with more generous funding than is available to the LEA sector.

Grant maintained schools are also permitted to select up to 10 per cent of their students, while forthcoming legislation will permit all schools to select up to 15 per cent of their intakes.

Already some over sub scribed schools are selecting on the basis of student and parental aptitudes. Some commentators see this form of social selection as even more invidious than the 11 plus examination.

The system has been further fragmented by the Tories' assisted places scheme, by which up to 35,000 places in independent schools are bought for able pupils out of public funds. A boon for many middle class parents perhaps, but the scheme also represents a further undermining of the state system on two counts: it robs the sector of the most able children and it underscores the belief that independent is better.

Teachers describe the introduction of the national curriculum as "an absolute nightmare". While they were consulted by the government on the curriculum they were also ignored, they say.

Teachers argued for flexibility at primary level but instead a rigid 10 subject national curriculum was introduced for five year olds. Rather than concentrating on the "three Rs" in the early years and giving children a good foundation in these vital areas, teachers are now forced to teach a wide range of subjects. As a result, standards of literacy and numeracy have fallen. Since its introduction the national curriculum has been slimmed down but it still represents a considerable workload for teachers.

It was during the Thatcher years that teacher morale reached an all time low and educators have suffered under a series of Secretaries of State for Education who have treated them with disdain.

By far the most unpopular was John Patten, who called parents who disagreed with his views "neanderthal" and who was forced to pay substantial undisclosed libel damages to Birmingham's chief education officer, Professor Tim Brighouse. Patten, nick named the "invisible man" for his refusal to attend a north of England LEA conference, described Brighouse, a former professor of education at Keele University, as a "nutter" and a "madman" at a fringe meeting at the 1993 Conservative Party conference.

GILLIAN SHEPHERD, a former teacher who was appointed Secretary of State for Education in 1994, is widely regarded as a great improvement on her predecessors.

Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, said recently that education would be the main policy issue on which the forthcoming general election would be fought and undoubtedly the British political parties have turned education into a political football.

Tony Blair had better watch out. Traditionally Labour has favoured non select ion but, by using education as a political football like his Tory counterparts, he is annoying many of the parents who represent that part of the electorate he is most anxious to court.

They are beginning to find Labour Party education policy confusing. Shadow education spokesman David Blunkett says "read my lips - no selection", while his boss nods in the direction of grant maintained and selective schools and then suggests fast tracking for able students. Come the election voters may yet decide to opt for the devil they know.