Marcia Neal, a retired high school teacher, is seeking a seat on the Colorado State Board of Education. Her diagnosis of Colorado's education system: "The top half of the students are well-educated, the bottom half receive extra help, but the middle half we are leaving out."

Can someone help me out, please? The Treasury's coffers are empty. The last thing the Chancellor needs is greater demand for public spending - say, education spending. So why then is the government embarked on a war against private schools - a war that, if successful, will only result in private schools hiking their fees to pay for state-compelled bursaries, thereby forcing many parents to pu...

Some eyecatching numbers in today's FT about how many free schools we can expect, and when. According to Department of Education officials, there will be about 12 of the new schools in 2011, another 50 in 2012, and around 100 in 2013. The paper dwells on how this falls short of the Tories' pre-election rhetoric. And it's true: the original idea was for around 3,000 new schools acros...

Did he have a privileged education? You bet he did. He went to Haverstock, one of those schools that are called comprehensives in much the way that some private schools (and a few comps) are called grammar schools for historical reasons. Haverstock is (like, say, the London Oratory) one of those half a dozen or so London private schools which have the effrontery to send their bills to the taxpayer...

• Government plans include sex education for all pupils • Catholic schools welcome clause on teaching 'values' Sex education is to be made compulsory in all state schools in England but faith schools will also be free to preach against sex outside marriage and homosexuality, under government proposals. The plans to make personal, social and health education (PSHE) compulsory fr...

The Welsh Conservatives have unveiled their big idea in the field of education this morning, free schools. Well yes, I know that school education has been free for a very long time but this is not what they are getting at. The plan is to set up schools directly funded by the Welsh Assembly Government so as to give them the freedom to make their own decisions. However, all schools will have to abid...

The A-Level pass rate has risen for the 28th successive year. Debasing the coinage. It's what governments do....

EDUCATION secretary Fiona Hyslop was clinging on to her job last night after failing to defend the Scottish Government's schools policy.

Michael Gove has just given an extremely well-received half-hour presentation to party members at the spring forum on the key points of party policy on his education brief. He prefaced his points by saying that comparing education performances with the...

Sex education is to be made a compulsory part of the national curriculum in primary and secondary schools under government plans to cut teen pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. A new personal, social and health education (PSHE) curriculum, expected by 2010, will include compulsory sex and relationships education as well as better advice warning children against drugs and alcohol. Childr...