Damian Green, Conservative education spokesman, Today Programme, Radio 4 “It is so different than (it was in) my schooldays. I can’t ever remember a boy going on a Ban the Bomb march or to a pop festival, which was the big thing in my day. I just can’t imagine that anyone would have been given permission for such a thing.”

James Arbuthnott, Tory MP for North East Hampshire and former captain of school at Eton, on the news that the school’s pupils will get time off to join the Countryside March

“It is no longer enough to make schools grovel to business and learn its language. They have to turn themselves into businesses. They have to learn to live in’the real world’, which, as we all know, is what goes on in the offices of big companies. Everything else is an illusion.”

Francis Beckett on provisions in the Education Act which allow schools to sell services to each other, New Statesman

“Competition between different countries all boils down to the competition between talented professionals and the creativity of different nations.

“Education is the basis for talent cultivation and for strengthening creativity... The government is duty-bound to step up educational innovation by increasing funding for education and reducing the administrative barriers for private investors in education. As ‘the engineers of the human soul’, our teachers should also be urged to come up with proposals for better ways to develop the morality and intellect of our young students.”

China Daily, September 12

“It was nuts; it became a huge distraction. It increased friction, it increased disciplineproblems, having to worry about who was wearing what. It wasn’t worth the fight.”

Beth Shedd, teacher at Sierra Vista junior high, California, explains why her school has joined a wave of US schools giving up uniform policies which were adopted in the 1990s, New York Times, September 13