THE Con-Dem coalition's promotion of privatised education and health firms in developing countries represents an appalling misuse of aid money.

It is hardly surprising that the Tories, so keen on selling off public services to enrich their profiteering pals, are promoting the same toxic policies abroad.

Supposedly progressive projects - such as the Girls' Education Challenge - are meant to be about schooling some of the poorest girls in the world. 

When announced by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg in 2011, it was about "improving the lives of up to one million girls."

But from the outset the government's seemingly innocuous admission that it was "asking NGOs, civil society and the private sector to come up with proposals for how the money should be spent" should have raised eyebrows.

Organisations such as Save the Children - which are contributing funds to the project, and in some areas setting up schools - are making a genuine effort to improve education in countries whose development has been stunted by imperialism.

But a scheme now "devolved" by the government to be run by "professional services network" PricewaterhouseCoopers is funnelling money into private-sector education and teaming up with some pretty sinister partners.

Partners such as Pearson, the transnational education and publishing giant, whose chief education adviser Michael Barber is now also the Department for International Development's (DfiD) chief education representative in Pakistan.

This is the Michael Barber who wrote 2011's hottest read, Deliverology 101: A Field Guide for Educational Leaders.

As NUT general secretary Christine Blower has pointed out, this book insists on the value of endless standardised testing regimes similar to those which have so distorted British education.

It's convenient that it does so since selling such standardised tests is one of the many useful services Pearson is happy to provide.

Pearson is at the heart of the Global Education Reform Movement, or Germ.

Germ is big on standardised testing because it seeks to turn schooling into a commodity which can be sold to consumers rather than a service provided for social benefit.

Consumers must have indicators as to which product to plump for, and churning out reams of statistics on kids' performance in often arbitrary tests provides this.

Imposing marketisation on state-provided education is bad enough, but the fact that DfiD is now offering funds to private schools which charge parents, compete with an under-resourced public-sector school system and pay peanuts in comparison to state schools is a scandal. 

It's not even confined to education, with our government handing cash to a gaggle of development agencies under the umbrella moniker Harnessing Non-State Actors for Better Health for the Poor, which encourages governments to enter public-private partnership health provision.

Again, something which has been imposed on our own health service in the form of the PFI loans which extort crippling repayments from hospitals to many times their original value.

Promoting privatisation makes sense for the Tories since the beneficiaries are in many cases British and US-based companies. If the inhabitants of developing countries lose out that's not out government's problem.

But using the aid budget to enrich big business will incite further cynicism over the value of Britain's contributions to poorer countries.

Ukip leader Nigel Farage is already prone to rail against the barbarism of providing assistance to those who need it most.

His message must not be reinforced by a self-serving and dishonest coalition which can stoop no lower in its abuse of our trust.

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists contains a scene where a charity's well-heeled officials explain how they have spent the money raised through donations.

After suitable "incentives" for managers have been paid it turns out there's not much left for the poor.

A hundred years on, not much has changed.