THE fining of families who take holidays in term time is one of the many government policies whose consequences, whether intended or unintended, damage the life chances of working class children.

The proportion of children entitled t free school means - the most common measure of economic deprivation used on schools - achieving 5+ A*-C at GCSE (including English and maths) is around 40 per cent, compared to around 65-70 per cent for their peers. 

Our schools are continually blamed by politicians for this pattern of entrenched disadvantage and yet, with real terms budget cuts and the slashing of local authority support services, even the most dedicated teachers are powerless to combat the pervasive effects of poverty. 

And it is a growing problem. By 2020, one on four UK children will be living in poverty.

In comparison to this, the government's flagship Pupil Premium funding is a proverbial drop in the ocean.

It is not even new money but simply taken from elsewhere in the education budget, much like the money spent on the disastrous "free" schools programme.

This money was taken directly from the Building Schools for the Future fund, ensuring that, while free schools proliferate in areas of relative advantage with a surplus of school places, the most disadvantaged children are taught in the most decrepit schools - presumable where the average Tory MP believes they belong.

Government housing policy and cuts to welfare benefits have exacerbated an already desperate situation. 

As Danny Dorling points out in his endorsement of the NUT's Stand Up for Education manifesto, the government's bedroom tax forces working class families out of their communities and disrupts children's lives at key points in their education.

Last year, nearly 10,000 children in the UK went hungry because their parents' benefits were stopped or cut. 

How are the many children forced out of their family home, forced to leave their schools, living in temporary accommodation because their families are languishing on council house waiting lists supposed to focus on their education?

The reality is they can't and don't, and lambasting schools and teachers will not deal with the entrenched inequality which is the hallmark of our society and our economic system.

If politicians cared, they would restore welfare benefits, they would tax the banks and corporations who exploit the loopholes in our system and use the money to invest directly in building Britain's economic base, securing jobs for future generations.

If they really cared, they would put this country on the road to a different economic system, centred around people not profits,

But unfortunately it is not just the Tories who don't care about the generations of young people failed by the system. Labour peer Lord Adonis' championing of the demolition of council houses to build "city villages" shows clearly how much he cares about the lives of working class kids.

The choice facing us at the coming election in clear. 

Either we elect a government which believes in perpetuating a system of economic exploitation which destroys the life chances of the significant proportion of working class children living in poverty or we re-elect a government which would seek to speed this process up and destroy the only organisations working class families have to defend themselves. 

Looked at like this, it is much easier to see the bourgeois democratic process for what it is - a figleaf covering the brutal dictatorship of capital.

Whilst it is clear what me must do on May 7 to get this government out, we must organise and build within our unions, within our communities, up and down the country to ensure that our class is never faced with the same choice again.