THE Labour leader of Oxford City Council, who branded private schools a “significant problem”, is sending his daughter to a fee-paying Abingdon school.

Bob Price blamed his wife Joanna for the decision to send their 11-year-old daughter to the School of St Helen and St Katharine, where Samantha Cameron, the wife of Prime Minister and Witney MP David Cameron was educated.

Mr Price said his wife and youngest daughter had decided between them that she should attend the £3,945-a-term school from September.

He told the Oxford Mail: “It’s a family decision, and it’s very much my wife and daughter who have taken that decision.

“I think that the existence of private schools is a significant educational problem for the country and one which has quite significant downsides to it.

“But it is a personal choice that you would have to talk to them about.”

The Oxford Mail was unable to contact Mrs Price for comment.

Hinting how the decision was made, Mr Price added: “The family unit is a unit of society that needs to have give and take, and you need to make compromises within it to make for harmony and peace.”

Political opponents yesterday offered the family their backing.

Conservative Melinda Tilley, the county council cabinet member for schools improvement, said: “I respect his judgment as a parent to do what he thinks is best for his child.”

Mr Price, a Labour councillor since 1983, is a governor of New Hinskey Primary School, but is not the first Labour politician to face tough decisions over schooling.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair was criticised when he sent eldest son, Euan, to the London Oratory, a selective state school, while Harriet Harman was attacked for sending her son to a grammar school at a time the party opposed selection in schools.

Then one of their fiercest left-wing critics, Hackney North MP Diane Abbott, chose to send her son James to the £10,000-a-year City of London school, admitting her actions were “indefensible”.

And former Education Secretary Ruth Kelly sent her son to a £15,000-a-year Oxfordshire boarding school, specialising in helping children with dyslexia and developmental dyspraxia.