JADE Goody says she has paid her sons’ school fees “right up until they are 16” with the money she’s made from talking about her imminent demise from cancer.

“I never had an education so I feel it’s the greatest gift I can give my children,” she says.

I do hope Children’s Secretary Ed Balls is paying attention.

At her stage of life Jade evidently feels she can leave nothing to chance. And while there are some brilliant state schools – usually those which are selective and/or run on traditional lines – she obviously feels she can’t take the risk.

In that she’s no different from the rest of us – including Ed Balls and his government mates who never compromise on quality when it’s their kids’ futures at stake.

For years they’ve drilled into us that education, education, education is what counts more than anything if you’re to lift kids out of poverty and the nightmare upbringing Jade had.

Now, at last, most of us truly believe it. We know that the best jobs in life go to those who had the most opportunities and that the best way to give kids opportunities is to educate them well.

So my heart goes out to each and every parent who found out on Monday that they didn’t get their kid into the school of their choice. I know how you feel. It’s agony.

You feel like you’ve let them down. You feel like you’ve blighted their future. You feel that you’ve failed because other parents have made it happen, either by canny house-moves or fighting the system.

Forget the NHS, education is the biggest postcode lottery in this country. You pay the same council tax as everyone else in your borough or district.

Yet you can end up with a horrendously differing service on the education front, ranging from schools that are better than private. Or so bad that 70 per cent of kids don’t even scrape five GCSEs.

It’s been fashionable in recent years to scoff at so-called “sharp elbowed” middle-class parents fighting like tigers to get the best for their kids.

The reality, as I know from having to campaign to improve my kids’ under-performing school, is that class or background have little to do with aspiration for your children. Single parents, divorced parents, grannies, families with his ’n’ hers Mercedes, others who would traditionally be dismissed as “travellers” – we all joined together to try and do something about the problems the school was facing.

I am sickened by those – normally well-heeled and well-suited with Rolls-Royce state provision – who dig at the so-called “pushy parents” in this situation.

It’s implied that wanting the best for their kids means that somehow, other people’s children must be disadvantaged to provide it.

This is rubbish.

As I can personally vouch, it’s the pushy parents who ensure that things improve for everyone’s children, not just their own. When children are well-behaved, quiet in class and on-task, the outcome of every child improves.

And what’s so wrong with being a pushy parent anyway? Isn’t that what parents are for? To stick up for their children and try and set them on the right path?

In general, the children of active parents – and for that read involved and caring people who won’t shut up when they see something wrong – are not the ones who are mugging other children for their iPod to feed a drug habit.

Their kids are not usually those languishing on benefits, brandishing knives in gang warfare and blobbing out on life’s sofa.

It is indicative that Jade Goody’s dying wish appears to be that her children receive a good education.

Nothing, not even death will she allow to get in her way. That’s how important it is to her. Like I said, I do hope Ed Balls is paying attention.