I am amongst those who are considering sending my son to a private school. My reason is that despite living within site of two good schools, their policies of drawing tiny catchments to allow the maximum extent of selection means there is a risk of my son being placed in a poor school some distance from my home.

This has happened to an acquaintance nearby who now must travel some distance with her two newborns to deliver and collect her child from school whilst children from out of the area take up local places.

This is too much of a risk, so we will be paying for certainty as well as a system which accommodates the needs of parents in the hours they offer (as well as the lack of inconveniences like "in service training days").

My preference would be that all schools, including faith schools, must draw first from a catchment and that every home should be in at least one catchment, the remaining places being made available to those out of the catchment giving planning certainty.

Colin, London, UK

John, Manchester

You're right. In fact my 4 kids were educated privately in the UK 'BB' - before Blair! My point was the UK education system was already well into decline before New Labour and because more people could afford it they'd already started to spend money on private schooling. Maybe things are even worse now than when I was 'involved'.

Nev, Rudkøbing, Denmark

Britain’s military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq may account for a surge in the number of Armed Forces families sending children to private schools.
Indeed, subsidised too.

J FLEMING, peterborough, cambs

Remember also that ten years ago Blair claimed that 'Education, education, education' were his top priorities. His failures in this key area have been spectacular; exams have been dumbed down, illiteracy has risen, school discipline has broken down and as a direct result parents are making financial sacrifices to keep their children out of Labour's State schools.
Labour will claim thay have improved schools but this is typical of their ' style over substance' rhetoric. Reality is that parents are opting OUT of State schools and INTO fee-paying schools. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Rick, London, England

My son, whose mother is a native French-speaker, got an A* in French GCSE. The same summer I asked him to write a postcard in French to his grandmother. It was so badly spelled I had to rewrite it for him. Thereupon I refused to let my other son do GCSE languages, on the old-fashioned principle of "you either do a thing properly or not at all".

Michael Lomax, Brussels

michael lomax, Brussels,

Like everything else with this government - falling standards, bureacracy, hypocrisy, creeping privatisation and political correctness.

Having two children in full time education throught this administration, I would contend that it is not about money.

John of Manchester hits the nail on the head when he talks about lack of discipline. From the time that my son started his secondary school in 1998 to my daughter's time now at the same school, the standard of discipline has fallen through the floor and not just among the children.

The 'teachers', a term I use advisedly, are themselves ill disciplined, ill equipped to teach and don't seem to care or treat the kids with respect either. The turnover of staff is huge, not least because many of them are either Eastern Europeans who do not speak the language but have to be given a job as per EEC rules, or Antipodeans here on an extended holiday just earning some money by teaching to have a good time and keep themselves solvent.

edwardingle, chesham, bucks

State education has been in decline in the UK since Labour's politically-motivated abolition of most grammar schools in the 60's, when more state-educated children went to the top universities than do today, even after 10 years of Blairism.

What the current GCSE figures for state schools don't reveal is the huge number of parents having to provide additional private teaching for their state-educated children, thereby subsidising both the system and the results.

As for the curriculum itself, the way passes are being faked is quite astonishing. In English, children no longer read books, they do coursework on a small segment of a book, watch a film based on it (Austen, Shakespeare), have their essays massaged by the teacher over a period of weeks, and get an A*. They don't read the whole book or anything else by the author. They are getting A* results for literature while effectively illiterate. How do I know? This is my son's current experience at his grammar school.

Martin, London,

Having been to an independent school for 8 years (secondary level) and leaving after A-levels in 1997; and comparing then and now to state run schools (my wife is a teaching assistant in a state school) the key difference is that independent schools can provide the most current teaching, books, and facilities. Combined with lower class numbers, it all means that the education experience is more rewarding. A symptom of state education over the last few years has been one of exclusion (or as the government calls it-inclusion) with children of all abilities and temperamnets grouped together, rather than tailoring the teaching to the child.
How often have we heard of state shcool/government education knee-jerk reactions? Rising affluence has simply meant that parents can, in our consumer society, make choices about their children. the independent sector is what the state sector should look like if it got its finger out and listened to parents, teachers, and education psychologists.

KC-N, Hastings, Somerset

Apart from the law, nearly all the top jobs require maths and science skills. Over the last ten years the teaching of those subjects has been in freefall in the state sector. It really should not surprise us that savvy parents are opting for private education. The tragedy is that science used to be a key factor in social mobility for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. Not any more. You need money or influence to get access to a good science education in the UK these days.

Steve, Oxford, UK

Nev,

You obviously do not have any children in State education in the UK. If you did, you would know that the standard of education and lack of discipline endemic to that system is a serious problem. Like many others, we have made sacrifices to school our children privately and it is worth every penny. I will not have my children used as pawns in a left-wing social engineering game.

Of course, the fact that many of the hypocritical left-wing ruling elite already educate their children privately is all you need to know about the quality of State schools in the UK.

John, Manchester, UK

Be careful with the logic here. ('Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.') What was the trend before Blair? Chances are this chnage has been underway for decades and is about affluence, not the quality of state education under Labour.

Nev, Rudkøbing, Denmark

I find it very surprising even counter intuitive that the number of students at ISC's is increasing whilst policies of government and universities are to favour students from state schools.

The implication of the above is that a larger numer of ISC students will be competeing for a smaller number of allocated spaces at better universities!

John Lee, Jamaica,