54% of the top 100 newspaper editors, columnists, broadcasters and executives were educated privately, despite fee-paying schools catering for 7% of the school population

Source: MediaGuardian

I don't know about you, Nic, but I'd take that as a challenge

There's a whole raft of interesting education-related stories out at the moment, as a matter of fact. Demands to cut the National Curriculum, always a thorny issue, although I usually come down in favour of retaining it. It's all very well to say you want a curriculum that is not 'carved up into subjects' - but they have the focus to actually deliver a planned programme of learning. It's true that you don't learn Macbeth because of any actual practical application from that specific text, it's the skills and broad understanding which it gives, but that doesn't mean you don't teach Macbeth in an English lesson as part of a national curriculem.

Meanwhile, the Tories are asking for more history lessons. It's interesting, because at Eton (summer school, I'm not part of that elite ) our history teacher told us to watch out for the almost-yearly demand for more British History from the Conservative Party - so it appears to be one of the few things left unscathed by Cameron's regime. Of course, I'd like to have done 'more history' but that reflects my bias, since I'd also like to have done 'less PE', 'less RE' and 'less pointless assemblies' which would hardly be championed by any politican. To be fair, however, it does seem that at the moment there's an over-reliance on teaching a few periods (WW2, American Civil Rights, ur, WW2...) in great detail but relative isolation, and that should change.

Finally! Do young children learn homophobia? Yes, yes they do. And schools should show absolutely no mercy in cracking down on it with compulsory sex-education (not the silly ones that parents can opt their children out of because it might hurt their poor ickle ears) which explicitly endorses homosexuality as a positive orientation, with gay role models and couples from an early age. It's utterly unacceptable that "schools had asked homosexual pupils to leave as they were unable to cope with homophobic bullying" - clearly, the bullies should have been the ones to leave. Any complaints? Bring it on