My grandson is being bullied at school. The school states it has a zero tolerance policy on bullying and that all such cases will be dealtwith severely. Despite this the bullying has progressed from verbal abuse to kicking and punching. What can the school do to stop this? And what legal recourse do parents have in a situation like this?

H Phillips, Bicester

Policies that are not implemented are not worth the paper upon which they are written. The school should identify the bullies and make it very clear that if they continue to intimidate your grandson they will be expelled. That is what “zero tolerance” means.

Education lawyer Jack Rabinowicz tells me that state schools are obliged by law to deal with the matter and any school, state or private, which fails to deal with bullying can be sued. All incidents should be logged, the head teacher confronted, and, if the situation is not resolved, legal advice sought.

My daughter is in year 9 at a comprehensive and will be choosing her GCSE options soon. The school has introduced an initiative for the more able giving them the option to forgo one GCSE choice and take an AS-level in critical thinking instead. The school says that obtaining this AS qualification a year early will give pupils an advantage when applying to universities. While I applaud the school for trying to stretch these children, I feel that the top universities would still prefer 10 good GCSE grades – A or A* – followed by four good AS-levels and three good A-levels. Do you agree? My daughter eventually wants to study for a science degree at university.

Name withheld

Critical thinking is a nonsubject. As you suspect, top universities want evidence of high achievement in the subject the student has applied to study. Ideally, this means that your daughter should be studying biology, chemistry and physics as separate subjects.

Her school should be seeking to extend the specialist knowledge of its brighter students, while, of course, ensuring that teachers across the curriculum encourage students to think critically within their subject.

If you have a question for Chris Woodhead, write to him c/o The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST or e-mail him, with your name and address, at education-questions@ sunday-times.co.uk

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