Many parents who have endured a stressful struggle to keep their child out of a failing comprehensive school will have been moved by the story last week of the inquest into Steve Don’s death.

Don, a father of two, took his own life in 2005 after begging Brighton council to reverse its decision to give his daughter a place at one of the city’s worst schools, where only 25% of pupils gained five good GCSEs last summer. After one unsuccessful appeal, he threatened to commit suicide unless she was offered a better alternative. Eventually, an official told Don that the council had relented, but the surveyor didn’t believe him and flung himself under a train.

On the day he died, his wife told the inquest that he had phoned to say: “They’re not returning my calls, I’m going to carry out my threat.” Their daughter reportedly told her: “Daddy killed himself because he could not get me into the school I wanted.”

It’s a tragic and desperate story – but with a sixth of state secondary schools posting shockingly low exam results and reports that up to 24,000 teachers are incompetent, many families are digging deep – even borrowing against their homes – to avoid the state system.

Figures published last week show private school numbers at their highest level for five years. Despite fee rises of more than 6% last year, which pushed the average annual cost of private schooling to more than £11,000, the number of pupils has climbed to a record 511,677.

Typical of those making sacrifices is restaurant owner Michael Dodd. He paints a bleak picture of his own schooldays, when he became “a bit of a delinquent” at a large comprehensive. So eager was Dodd to make sure that his two sons had a better education, he and his wife moved to live close to a successful state primary.

For a while, all was well; but when the head teacher left, standards slipped. By the time the family had tried another two schools for their oldest son, Daniel, he had fallen from top to the bottom of the class. “He was bored and hated learning,” says his father.

Dodd admits that finding the £12,000 annual fees for both Daniel and his brother Joe to attend Brighton college is a struggle: the family has had to take out a loan against equity in their home. But they have no regrets. At 15, Daniel is predicted to get 9 A*s in his GCSEs this summer.

Like the Dodds, physiotherapist Mandy Noble and her policeman husband also gave state schools a shot. Then, when their oldest son turned 11, he started at a local comprehensive, an underperforming school near their home in Surrey.

“I just couldn’t believe how little work he was getting,” says Mandy. “There seemed to be very little direction or control.” After a term, the Nobles moved him to a private school. This spring, when their daughter Jasmine was offered a place at the same comprehensive, they turned it down. So she, too, will be educated privately, even though Noble says that having to find £24,000 a year in school fees for her children is “terrifying”.

“In this area private schools are booming and it’s because many state schools are not quite up to scratch. I want to make sure my children get a good education: they only get one chance,” she says.

Those who switch are not simply driven by concerns that children are not being well taught. Even in well-heeled South Moreton in Oxford-shire, where the tiny village school is excellent, boys are being pulled out at the age of eight. The headmaster puts this down to the state of the economy.

Heather McGregor’s reason for transferring her two youngest boys from this primary to a prep boarding school was the effect of the playground culture on her sons.

“It wasn’t the quality of the teaching, to be honest. That was very high,” she says. “It was the constant demands to have the latest toy from Argos or the latest Nintendo.”

McGregor says that at private school, where television is limited and mobiles are banned, her children – the oldest is at Wellington college – have rediscovered a love of reading.

With demand for private education rising and a credit crunch looming, a debate is starting about how much financial help private schools – many of them set up as charitable foundations and enjoying tax breaks worth a total of £100,000 a year – should provide for middle-class families scrimping and saving to pay school fees.

While top schools, under pressure from the charity commission to undertake “good works”, are busily raising money to pay for free places for the poor – defined as those earning less than about £17,000 a year – there are fears that the problems of the middle classes may be overlooked.

Next week, Rugby school will announce an appeal to raise money for 40 free places, each costing about £26,500 a year. The school already has 20 boarders on such bursaries. The head teacher, Patrick Derham, says he cannot say how much a family needs to earn before it is no longer eligible for assistance – “It depends on many things, including assets.”

At Brighton college the headmaster, Richard Cairns, says five bursaries are reserved for the poor, and Cairns thinks the government should pay for those places. “In Australia, the government funds a quarter of the cost of independent schools and, in return, a quarter of the places go to children from poorer families. That seems a sensible system,” he says.

The education philanthropist Sir Peter Lampl believes that the fairest way forwards is for children to be admitted to about 100 private schools, based on how they score in an entrance exam. Families that could afford to pay would be charged on a sliding scale depending on their income; the government would pay the rest.

“We want to raise aspirations among the young and give them the chance to live life to the full, dream dreams and excel,” says Derham. But don’t all children deserve that?

From the East End’s badlands to a top boarding school via a bursary

Marcus Kerr and Charles Ogunkeyede are a long way from the mean streets of Newham, east London, where street robberies are the highest in the capital. The two teenagers, in their second term boarding at Rugby school, are among 20 pupils whose fees are covered by bursaries worth around £26,500 a year.

This week Kerr, who previously attended Kingsford community school – where Adam Regis, stabbed to death last year, was also a pupil – is due to speak at a champagne reception to raise funds to double the number of free places at Rugby.

Kerr, whose playgroup assistant mother and three sisters live in Beckton, was put forward for the Rugby scheme via an after-school programme for bright black boys run by Ray Lewis, a former prison governor, in east London.

Development director Kerry Wilson says that all the bursary pupils are doing well despite the disparity in wealth between their families and those of other pupils. Seven years ago a TV company funded Ryan Bell, a council estate child, to attend Downside, a public school in Somerset. However, after a good start Bell was expelled.

“It could all go badly wrong, for the pupils and the rest of the school,” said Wilson. “We keep a close eye on how they are doing.” Another pupil on a free place, whose parents came to Britain from Sri Lanka, says she initially had trouble understanding the school slang.

“High school prefects are called ‘the levee’ and the tuck shop is ‘the stodge’,” she explains. “It’s not as posh as I expected, no one is snobby here.

Bursaries and scholarships at some top private schools

- Cheltenham Ladies College is planning to treble its full-fees bursaries from 10 to 30 by raising roughly £16.7m to cover the cost. The proportion of school fees spent on bursaries was 1.9% in 2006/07 and is 2.25% for 2007/08. For more information see www.cheltladiescollege.org/welcome

- Eton has launched a £50m appeal to increase its number of means tested bursaries in a scheme that could extend to 40 per cent of its intake. In the past bursaries covered up to 50% of school fees, now some will be available to cover the entire cost of a place. For more information see www.etoncollege.com/default.asp

- St Paul's boys school has announced it would like to move towards "needs blind admission", ie offering all places on merit, irrespective of parents ability to pay the fees. For more information see www.stpaulsschool.org.uk/page.aspx?id=8158

- Perse School for girls, Cambridge: 10% of senior school girls are awarded bursaries towards part of the fees. For moe information see www.perse.cambs.sch.uk

- Harrow has launched a £40m appeal to provide free places for more than 20 boys. For mroe information see www.harrowschool.org.uk

- James Allen's Girls School offers 17 means tested bursaries with families on very low incomes eligible for a bursary covering the full cost of the fees. Bursary assistance tapers out at family incomes of £53,000. For more information see www.jags.org.uk/jags

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