I justified my approach to diversity and choice by an appeal to the libertarian tradition, which has strong roots in British political philosophy. Walford ignores libertarianism completely, perhaps precisely because there are libertarian elements of both left (Godwin etc.) as well as right. Instead, he merely indicates my bias in favour of choice. This is not, however, a random bias, but one that springs directly from a libertarian stance. Walford's bias is against choice. In what political philosophy is this grounded? Or is it just an ungrounded bias? One of the distinguishing features of debate between academics (as opposed to politicians) is that they seek a more rational and explicit philosophical position on which to base their policy biases and preferences. Educational writing from the academic left currently has a desperately weak philosophical base. Walford does nothing to rectify this. Indeed, he is reduced to platitudes such as 'It is the role of the state to ensure that all children receive an excellent education', from which it is impossible to derive anything worthwhile about the limits or conditions of justifiable state intervention. Walford castigates Conservative education policies, presumably because he aligns my paper with Tory policy. This inference is explicable only as an example of the tendency of left-wing sociologists of education to divide writers into one of two camps: traditional socialists ('us') and Thatcherites ('them'), which justifies Walford's reiterated attack on the City Technology Colleges (CTCs) and grant-maintained (GM) schools. It is off-target, however. I applauded the Edwards and Whitty criticisms of government policy towards the CTCs, grant maintained (GM) schools and the assisted places scheme. In my 1994 publication, where I argued for much greater diversity of schools, I specifically stated that CTCs and GM schools were not what I had in mind, but rather diversity by curriculum specialisation as well as along different religious, philosophical and ideological lines. The education policy landscape, on both right and left, has changed. Seeking to move beyond debate about CTCs and GM schools, I set the argument in a wider social and political context, which ironically Walford accuses me of neglecting. This context is reflected in the now widespread (i.e. common-sensical) view that choice is desirable. Since the 1960s we have come to expect to make choices over so many aspects of our lives-food, clothes, holidays, cars, leisure. The collapse of the Soviet empire has reinforced this suspicion of state denial of choice. Education policies are today perceived through this lens of the sophisticated consumer. Hirsch's (1994) OECD review shows that countries in very different social and political conditions are having to face the challenge of educational diversity and choice. He concludes that