The great majority are good kids who want to learn. That's the tragedy. I have a godson who begged his teacher to be locked into a store cupboard to study quietly, rather than continue to waste his time in the uproar of her class. Most kids are far from "underclass", but the underclass dictates the agenda in the schools.

As for getting the state out of education altogether, I couldn't agree more. But I fear there's no democratic appetite for it, yet.

Good luck with your new business venture!

Thanks for your comment. Glossing lightly over the sustained sneer (and having fixed your broken links so I could read them) let me begin by saying how amused I am that anyone would take the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy quite so far as to say, "It was better under Thatcher" + "It's worse now" = "It's all Thatcher's fault." Even by the standards of Britain's conventional thinkers, that's quite a corker. Perhaps it has simply become a habit to blame her? So much so that you are proud of yourself when you only make the argument to say you are not making it?

Did I defend Thatcher? Did I say I was a Conservative? How did this sad binary view of the world become so entrenched in British politics? Mrs Thatcher's life work was wasted and I am sorry she lived to see it. I hope she is not quite compos mentis enough to understand. We are back to a massively unproductive public sector dominating the economy (actually less productive than it was in 1978, since it actually made some - poor quality - manufactured goods then and makes little but trouble and cost now). That's partly because she failed to understand the importance of educational reform. There was little point in breaking the closed shop in manufacturing and exposing the dark nooks of the economy to competition, without breaking the Marxist grip of the educationalists.

So am I impressed by the text you cite? Not as much as by:

(1) My personal experience as an unwilling pioneer of comprehensive education.

(2) My wife's experience teaching in comprehensive schools (she says, with feeling, that she would clean lavatories before she would work in such hell holes again)

(3) 26 years of recruitment experience - watching standards steadily decline; young people arriving for their first day on the job with their heads full of unquestioned ideology and a capacity for independent thought only marginally more impressive than their ability to express themselves clearly.

(4) 17 years of comparing the idiocies at home with the rigours of education in post-Soviet countries, where maximal academic achievement (dependent on aptitude, of course) is a priority and a matter of family pride.

26 years ago, I was part of a group of trainee lawyers; all state educated and all working for privately-educated bosses. Today, I am part of a group of largely state-educated bosses disproportionately hiring (to my bitter personal disappointment) from the privately-educated. Not that I will discriminate against them, you understand. Quality comes first. I am just sickened by the knowledge that kids such as I once was no longer have a fair chance.

If I am not allowed to learn from my own life, without being accused of being a Yorkshireman (a snooty regional sneer from such a right-on commenter, I thought) then to hell with it.

Specific elements to be repaired, you ask?

1. Close all teacher training colleges and recruit again - from overseas if necessary. Just like Ronald Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. It shouldn't be hard. After all the Soviet Bloc never succumbed to Labour's daft theories on education. There are plenty of rigorous Polish, Russian, Czech and Hungarian professors of education. Not to mention the French and Germans, who have also retained a two or three school selective system and a thoroughly elitist approach. Without a purge of the Marxists in control of educational doctrine, there is no hope. Margaret bribed the steel-workers into taking redundancy. Maybe Dave can bribe these comrades into an early retirement; preferably to Cuba, or the Taliban controlled bits of Afghanistan.

2. There's no need to restore Grammar Schools as such. We simply need to introduce rigorous streaming (with plenty of opportunities to be promoted/demoted between streams) on a subject by subject basis. This would be better than the Grammar Schools because, just sometimes, there's a child who is hopeless at everything except, say, Geography - and such a student can at least have the chance to be in the top stream at that.

3. We need to remove all ideological content from state schools, secularising them thoroughly. Moral guidance, religion, politics, these are all matters for family and community and have nothing to do with the state. The only contribution of schools to social education should be to send home any child who falls short of minimum standards of behaviour, particularly in any way tending to the disruption of the education of others. Better that they get no education, than that they prevent dozens from getting it. If their parents object, let them teach them to behave.

4. We need to acknowledge that diversity of thought is a good thing and empower local schools to set their own curriculum. No more regular announcements from Ministers about how children are to be taught x, y or z. How school get to the standards set by examination boards should be a matter for their management team.

5. Judging whether schools have reached a good standard should be a matter for their customers; the parents. One advantage of retaining a single-campus venue for all streams is that even quite rural areas can then offer two or three schools to choose from.

Any other ideas, dear readers?