"Pupils in Trafford, where there are grammars, outperform those in Bury, where there are none, even though the cities are socially similar."

As a proud ex-pupil of Bury Grammar School I should point out this research is not quite right! And incidentally Bury is a town and not a city.

Dan, Melbourne, Australia

I favour, streaming throughout a child's education, not selection at an arbitrary age of 11 or 13. The Tories are right to put this failed policy to bed and I think Cameron was absolutely right, by slapping down the old guard intent on living in the past, which the electorate has so rounding dismissed.

I think education which encourages a minority of children at the expense of the majority is simply wrong, unless it is entirely privately funded and without tax breaks.

The notion of giving parents more choice and influence over their child's education through vouchers, is worthy of detailed examination. As a School Governor of an excellent school in the Yorkshire Dales, I worry for the children in those schools subject to special measures, surely parent power is the key to their progress.

John R Bacon, Richmond, Yorkshire UK

It would be good for the two prominent parties to admit that their greatest errors were 1) Labour: The Destruction of the Grammar School system and 2) Conservatives: The Sale Off of Council Houses and Playing Fields. Both were fundamental parts of the structure of what is best in our society and both were very much needed by the most vigorous and important part of any society, the Aspirant Middle.

Frankland Macdonald Wood, Sansepolcro 52037, Italy

Vouchers are a stupid idea. The conservatives have tried again and again to sell them and failed everytime. I don't think Cameron will be any more successful. Moreover, if he resorts to comoflaging them as Academies+ he will get no electoral advantage from it.

Instead the Tories should be talking localism. This is the essence of Mr Brady's complaint. How can the party extoll choice but deny it when local people make the 'wrong' answer. The policy therefore should be not to have a policy but to let local people decide on a level playing field so that if the people of Slough want Grammars and of Liverpool want Comprehensives, then that should be fine by us. In fact, what business do those of us living elsewhere have telling other towns how to educate their children?

Scary, Windsor, Berks

I had no idea that Michael Portillo lost the vote for the leadership of the Tory party by only one vote in 2001. What a pity. I'm sure he would have made a stronger and more successful leader than IDS. and all the ones that followed (except perhaps Michael Howard).

Maxine, Southend , UK

Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work. Grammar schools work.

Big business are bringing in graduates from other countries because our education system - apart from the Gramma schools DOESN'T WORK !!!

WILL ALL YOU DUMB HEADS IN THE TORY AND LABOUR -PARTIES REALISE THAT YOU ARE DESTROYING THE PRODUCTIVENESS OF THIS COUNTRY WITH YOUR NAVAL GAZING !!!!

I notice that you all send your children to (selective) private schools, so you do understand don't you.

Grammar schools work, ENGLAND,

What does that say about Brown, that he was prepared to block a piece of legislation that he believed in purely for his own narrow selfish benefit. There is no way this man is fit to be PM.

Richard, Northwich,

Vouchers may or may not work, but the biggest concern with them is that they will merely entrench the current system, because the poorest will have their vouchers and the wealthier will have top up money.

Vouchers will need clear thinking through and not just ideology to be confident it can work, and we have to define what it means to be declared a success. If as Mr Portillo suggests we should be aiming for greater social mobility then someone needs to honestly show how vouchers will do this and not just assume it will.

Whatever approach is taken, something needs to be done to raise standards, although first someone needs to define what standards we are aspiring to.

Neil Murphy, cromer,

The whole education is hopelessly confused. "Choice" and "selection" are thrown into the mix as if they are vaguely the same thing, when they are actually polar opposites. In one case the state decides, in the other the parent decides.

Portillo seems in favour of "choice", but hasn't confrontedhow choice could really work.

Firstly you need to expand the number of school places, because without an significant excess of places, there can be no "choice". This will cost money.

Secondly you have to kill off the league table system, because any attempt to promote diversity will be lost under this linear ranking sledgehammer.

Thirdly you have to confront how you will deal with the fact that even with an expansion in supply, the best schools will be oversubscribed, and some kind of selection system will be needed. Is it going to be based on geography, financal, academic ability, lottery ?

Answer this and you may have a policy. But not just waving "choice" like a magic wand

Nick, France,

P.S. Since you think Brady is a bit of plodder, you might have bothered to check his facts. Trafford as "socially comparable" to Bury - you're having a laugh. Trafford might sound "inner-city", but actually contains the million pound house areas of Altrincham and Hale, and stretches out towards Cheshire. Bury contains the rather less than a million pound house areas such as Ramsbottom.

Nick, France,

Michael Portillo may be right to say that selective education has not been a conservative policy for 40 years, but that may be slightly missing the point.

The argument has moved on substantially. as recent social mobility data has shown There is now a palpable sense of increasingly entrenched priveledge in our society and a growing awareness that social mobility has decreased.

Decreasing selection in the state sector, the good comprehensives selecting by house price, increased emphasis on continuous assessment and homework (parental/tutor led) and a ballooning of private education make a childs destiny increasingly dependent on the fortunes of their parents. Opening up higher education has also been deleterious to the less advantaged as degrees are less meaningful and employers may grant early career opportunities on the basis of non-educational experience, contacts etc. Affluent parents with less bright children are obviously happy with this, but I fear for bright, less well off

chris laing, london, uk

I have spent the last week marking assignments for my 17 year-old students taking a BTEC National level course. It was my first encounter with students at this level, and it has been an eye-opener. During lectures I was concerned by their lack of ability to comprehend and synthesise the information given to them, but the standard of the written work is truly appalling. Not only are many of the students completely unable to write in sentences, they have no concept that copying verbatim from their text book or Wikipedia is wrong. The lecturers do their best, but we recognise that we are reaping the crop of the failures of successive government policies in education. I despair for these young people; they have been severely let down by those who should have secured the future of the next generation, not destroyed it. My generation (born in the 1950s) was lucky to get through school and university before the policy makers destroyed the education services of this country.

Julia Phillips, Shipston on Stour, England

As usual an excellent analysis. I am surprised that more people haven't picked up on the 'racial selection' as proposed by Willets (but no academic selection) - as noted by William MacDougall. For making that statement Willets should resign - that sort of social engineering is not part of Conservative Party policy and never has been. It smacks of Political Correctness something which the Cameroons appear unable to oppose.

Ian Burgess, Bristol,

if it aint broke don't mend it. thanks to this government's downgrading of marriage, we now have lots of single mums , many, not all, with unstable feral children. lets get some discipline into dealing with these children who often know their rights but not their obligations, before lowering all children's education into this melee.

philomena, maidstone, kent

It's all an exercise in semantics. The political parties are going to re-introduce 'grammar schools' but they are not in any circumstances to be called that. The objective ought to be to give all our children the best education possible commensurate with their abilities. But you can't say music, modern languages and mathematics should have special separate schools - and ministers children may have private education - but chemistry, biology, medieval history, and English literature will be reserved for the masses. I suspect we are going to have grammar schools after all, but they won't be called by that name.

Brian Lewis, Manila, Philippines

When will we wake up and face the truth? Our educational system, once the envy of much of the world, has now become so devalued that we are deceiving ourselves and our pupils. Of course there was hope in the old three tier system. As an 'eleven plus failure' from a working class home, condemned to a Secondary modern school, I had the opportunity to gain seven O levels, then transfer to a Grammar school for A levels and so go on to University and obtain an honours Physics degree. But what is of real concern now is that as a teacher, and former examiner, of over forty years experience, I am now expected to believe that academic standards are rising. Looking at what I had to learn and teach in the sixties, and what we do now, bears no comparison. We are doing our pupils a great injustice, giving them false expectations and no secure preparation for work in the real world so long as we continue to ignore the facts. Thank God that in some parts of the world we can still teach O level.

Mike loader, Nicosia, Cyprus

Good analysis in many ways. But note two things:

1 - Never mind what Thatcher and Major did, Tory policy in the last three elections was to permit more selection. Willets' reversal of that is a major and mistaken change.

2 - Willets' speech proposed substantial central control, rather than a real voucher system. Parents would be free to choose, as long as they choose schools without selection, with streaming, with phonics, and even with Ofsted still commenting on the arrangement of the chairs. In theory they are free to choose now, so there would be no "brave and radical" policy, except his subsequent appalling suggestion of allowing (requiring?) racial selection.

How can a conservative campaign for this man to be Education Minister?

WIlliam MacDougall, London,

If vouchers are such a good idea they should not be restricted to education. In fact, education is not the ideal place for vouchers since the principle that the vouchers will be spent by people well placed to choose the best option for their children is somewhat dubious.

No. Where we need vouchers is in our transport system. Rather than hand over vast sums of public money to various mediocre train and bus companies, give each person in the country a transport voucher and allow them to choose whether to spend it on petrol for their car or on a ticket for public transport. Let's see how long these companies last in a genuinely competitive market environment.

Jamie, Bolton, UK