Equity, diversity and competition, which together form a ‘holy trinity’ of effective educational provision in schools and universities, are closely related to each other and to our notion of social justice. They also form the basis for educational choice as the preferred lever for systemic improvement in developed economies, the theory being that more choice leads to greater competition, increased diversity in the marketplace and ultimately to greater equity in terms of student attainment and social mobility. Choice in education effectively devolves responsibility for attainment and social mobility from the state to the parent-consumer, and the facility for parents to choose their schools and colleges free from government involvement is increasing in popularity, as evidenced by the growing number of Charter Schools in the US and Academies in the UK and the emergence of privately owned, publicly funded universities. The traditional social democratic imperative is that good publicly funded education for all is necessary for social mobility even if that sometimes means whole-scale restructuring, but there are also neoliberal imperatives at work supporting the same direction of travel. The latter view is that parents have the moral right to use their resources to benefit their own children and that this should be facilitated by the state even if it reinforces existing social hierarchies. Parents acting in the best interest of their own children generate competition for both schools and universities, which is why choice is fundamental to the new (neoliberal) right and tolerated by the new (social democratic) left: poor schools are shut down, which is the intention, and informed parents transfer their children to better schools.