@zeban thanks for that Guardian link. Well then, that article just proves how messed up the whole system is. It's not complicated, if 'Cognita' makes a substantial profit out of education - it's not doing education for the right reasons. A profit for any business is a necessity but in education it should be regarded not as a profit but as a surplus which should and MUST be invested back into the education system in order to make a better learning environment for future generations of customers i.e. children.

@Curmudgeon. My boys don't need a boot camp. They are well socialised, fairly streetwise, broad minded, alert and competent young people. They want excitement, stimulation, inspiration, engagement, exploration and access to the wider world that surrounds them. These factors apply to many of their friends, no matter their demographic background. They don't want to be pinned down to the needs of kids who have the misfortune to come from screwed up dysfunctional backgrounds that make them incapable of concentrating on their life development.

In a sense this whole discussion aboout secondary education makes little sense because, as it must be at government level because there are too many hot potatoes that cannot be touched, it's not taking a holistic view of Education For All. The discussion is about one cohort of kids when really it should be looking generally at why so many children who get to secondary school age are altogether incapable of engaging in education at all; who seem rather to exist by underachievement or to thrive by disrupting their educational surroungings in which case no one gets a decent educational deal. The fact is that good schools are in large part good schools because they manage to keep underperforming kids out and kids who cannot perform get concentrated in a few schools where there's little chance for them to ever get out of life's slough of despond.

It's half a picture when we cannot see that Children NEED to be capable of learning how to be competent people. They need to be given the opportunity of becoming fully functioning grown ups and, quite patently, our society does not enable all people the chance to break away from their backgrounds - when the only route thay have is through education.

More must be done for education everywhere for everyone.