It is heartening in some ways to read in the more enlightened press that many people now understand that the socio-economic circumstances you are born into will predetermine more certainly than any other factor your success in educational terms.

What is disheartening is that the detrimental effect private schools have on the state system seems to have disappeared from the agenda. It is still the norm in this country that people aspire to send their children to private schools in the certain knowledge that they will gain a better education. As long as we allow this system of educational apartheid to prosper, we will continue to languish at the bottom of OECD surveys of education and wellbeing, and compare badly with our European partners. Much worse than that, we are letting our children down unforgivably.

Helen Flynn, Campaign for State Education, Harrogate.