Is a £10 bottle of Merlot really all our children are worth to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak?

While the Prime Minister oversees an education system in freefall, Leyburn Primary School, in his own constituency of Richmond in Yorkshire, has resorted to a raffle to fund computers for its students. After an appeal for donations, staff at the school were said to have been somewhat taken aback at receiving what is believed to be the cheapest wine available in the House of Commons shop from their representative - the UK’s leader-in-chief.

The paltry offering is dwarfed further when remembering reports only last month of how the PM and his wife, Akshata Murty - Downing Street’s richest inhabitants in history - handed over a staggering $3 million to US college, Claremont McKenna, to pay for a state-of-the-art computing lab. Fees for the Californian school are said to be around $86,500 a year for tuition and board.

Back on British soil, Sunak’s plan to improve education levels and the country’s ability to compete on a global scale is beginning to sound less sincere. In a speech in April, he said we have to “fundamentally change our education system” to give young people the knowledge and skills they need “to compete with the best in the world” - such as those with a $3m computing lab, perhaps?

Now, as teachers once again prepare to swap the classroom for a picket line this week, with head teachers likely to follow suit next term, our children’s education continues to take hit after hit, from all angles.

In a further blow to the opportunities for ordinary kids to get ahead, leaked comments from a private meeting last year appeared to show Sunak’s true colours when it comes to which children he will prioritise. He is said to have told Tory supporters he would get “far tougher” on courses at universities full of “people who don’t vote for us anyway”.

But does all of this come as any surprise when we’re talking about a man who last summer also boasted of diverting funds from those most in need, to more affluent areas such as Tunbridge Wells, in a reversal of Labour formulas which apparently “shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas”?

The one thing parents should be confident in, is their Prime Minister’s desire to improve the education system for all children - not least those who were not born into a life of privilege.

However, judging by these actions, Rishi Sunak is not that person.

When we do find a leader who genuinely supports young people from all walks of life, I think then, we will all raise a glass of House of Commons Merlot to that.