No, please don't click your mouse to select another page! Yes, I admit I am going to mention the general election. But I promise this report will be different from most other election coverage.

Odd, isn't it, how the subject that the government says is its "number one priority" has failed to catch light as an issue in the election campaign?

How can I be so sure? Well, I am not going to write about punches being thrown, the colour of the battle-buses, the latest photo-opportunity or what the spin doctors are saying.

No, call me old-fashioned if you will, but I thought it would be novel to talk about policy and, specifically, education policy.

Odd, isn't it, how the subject that the government says is its "number one priority" has failed to catch light as an issue in the election campaign?

Not sexy enough

It is not the fault of the politicians. They have been talking about schools and universities. It is the media (with BBC News Online being one of the honourable exceptions, of course) that do not seem to regard it as very sexy.

Some of this fear of talking about policy arises from the media's concern that viewers and readers will find it too dull.

But wouldn't people be more interested in what is being proposed for their children's school or for the cost of their university education than hearing about party leaders' walkabouts in hospitals or factories?

Editors are certainly fearful that too much worthy election coverage will cause their circulation or ratings to slump.

So while there is still lots of coverage of Blair, Hague and Kennedy hopping on and off their buses, there is not so much on their policies.

Not centre stage

When there is coverage of policy, education is rarely top of the list. This is not just true of this election. I have been covering elections for about 20 years and education has rarely taken centre stage.

Jobs, tax, health, defence, Europe: All these have featured strongly during past campaigns.

But the only time I can recall education taking the headlines, even briefly, was when Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Baker got in a public muddle over their radical schools policy in 1987. Even then the interest was more on the Tories' wobble than on the policy itself.

Perhaps this is because education rarely touches the emotions as strongly as some other issues.

Emotional impact

Would a parent haranguing the prime minister about their child's education ever have the emotional impact of someone who is upset about a partner with cancer?

Yet, while it doesn't compare with concerns over serious ill health, many parents do spend a lot of time worrying about their children's schooling and students do get anxious about their debts.

Also, everyone seems to agree that the future health of our economy rests on the education and skills of the workforce.

After all, there are key issues at stake. Those who argue that the parties are "all the same" should look at the education policies on offer.

Voter choice

There are clear choices to be made on class sizes, student fees, types of secondary school, teachers' pay, nursery education, and what and how children should be taught.

According to which party you vote for, you have choices: Between limiting class sizes or allowing popular schools to expand to meet parental demands, between abolishing tuition fees or keeping them, between creating more specialist schools or sticking with the comprehensive model.

It is also strange that education issues are getting so little interest just weeks after the media was full of stories about teacher shortages and schools having to send pupils home.

The teacher unions' industrial action has been suspended, but that doesn't mean the problem of teacher recruitment has gone away.

Yet election coverage has not revolved around teacher shortages.

Throwing eggs

Will it take a teacher throwing an egg at the education secretary or a politician attacking a student heckler to get the issue onto the agenda?

After all, the parties do offer a choice of policies for dealing with teacher vacancies which are running at their highest levels for years.

The Conservatives believe their "free schools" policy would solve the teacher shortage as it would make the job attractive again by restoring professional autonomy and ending bureaucratic interference in the classroom.

Labour put their trust in performance-related pay, training salaries and "golden hellos" for those choosing to enter shortage subjects.

Labour also explicitly promises to recruit an extra 10,000 teachers by January 2006.

Clear policies

The Liberal Democrats have their own distinctive policy too.

They would scrap performance-related pay, introduce payments for lesson planning for primary teachers, and provide a full training salary for would-be teachers.

They also have a specific pledge: To fund 5,000 extra teachers in secondary schools.

Three approaches to a common problem. You can take your choice and, even if none fit your views exactly, you can at least vote for the one that is closest to your ideal.

But only if the media have told you what those policy options are.