by Mary Beard

I wouldn't have wanted to spend much time with her. She was far too histrionic, too satisfied with her own cleverness and even more self-obsessed than the average early 20th-century don. But Jane Ellen Harrison changed the way we think about ancient Greek culture – peeling back that calm, white marble exterior to reveal something much more violent, messy and ecstatic underneath ("bloody Jane" they called her, for more reasons than one, I suspect). And she was the first woman in England to become an academic, in the fully professional sense – an ambitious, full-time, salaried, university researcher and lecturer. She made it possible for me to do what I do.

Harrison went up to Cambridge in 1874 to read classics at Newnham College. Though she missed a first (to her life-long annoyance), she was already an academic celebrity – and a trouble-maker. As a student, she even faced down William Gladstone, by claiming that her favourite Greek writer was the sceptical playwright Euripides (not, as the old man hoped, the pious Homer). Taken aback, he stuttered and walked away.

Through the 1880s she made her living in London as a journalist and by giving lectures, with ingenious sound effects and gas-powered lantern slides. It was mass entertainment: 1,600 people once turned out in Glasgow to hear her talk on Athenian gravestones (those were the days). In 1898 she went back to a fellowship in Cambridge, to write the books that would offer an entirely new vision of the ancient world. The austere titles (Themis, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion and others) conceal a heady mixture of Nietzsche, Durkheim, bull-leaping – and, of course, blood.

Harrison argued for women's suffrage but thought she would never want to vote herself. She fell repeatedly, volubly and unsuccessfully in love. When Virginia Woolf gave the lecture that became A Room of One's Own in Cambridge in 1928, she thought she glimpsed Harrison's ghost in Newnham's gardens. I sometimes see it too.

• Classics
• Mary Beard
• University of Cambridge

It's been three years of confusion and distress, but Andrew Penman has finally found a secondary school for his son. Why is it so hard, he asks

I can pinpoint the moment the panic set in. My son Robert was eight and Tim, the father of one of his best friends, had just visited the local comprehensive. A lot of noise was coming from one classroom as he walked past, so he peered through the small window in the door. The next moment, he told me, a pupil yanked open the door, squared up to him and demanded: "What do you want?"

The school was Rutlish in Merton, south-west London. Once it had been a grammar and old boys include John Major and the author Raymond Briggs, who hated his time there, describing it as "awful and snobbish".

I don't think he'd find it snobbish any more. I checked the results for Rutlish: at the time just one third of pupils could scrape together five or more GCSEs, including English and maths, with a C grade or better (today that figure is 49%).

No, my children would not be going to Rutlish, which meant I had to start thinking about an alternative. And "thinking" became "panicking".

A couple of other local state secondaries were not much better than Rutlish, but two were rather impressive. The trouble is, both were Catholic comprehensives.

On the website of one of them, Wimbledon College, was the following: "The school exists primarily to provide Jesuit education for children of the Catholic community. Once it has met its historic and current obligation to boys of the Catholic community, Wimbledon College welcomes other Christians and those who support the religious ethos of the school."

I don't suppose that includes atheists such as me or agnostics such as my wife, Pam.

Should we become fake Catholics? That's a question that took us about two years to answer.

On principle, I had nothing against the idea. We'd already faked being Anglicans to get our children – Robert and his younger sister, Anna – into a decent C of E primary school.

To be certain of a place, we started attending the local Anglican church when Robert was about two. The demographics of the congregation were interesting. There were a lot of children of two, three or four years old, a sprinkling of slightly older ones and then the figures fall off a cliff. You would struggle to find more than a couple of nine or 10-year-olds because, I assume, by then they had a primary school place so there was no further point going to church.

Pam and myself did not just sit at the back, we got involved. I was on the coffee rota after mass (which added an extra half hour or more to the misery) and the car rota to ferry the old and infirm. Pam helped at junior church and ended up sitting on the parochial church council.

You can't say we didn't put in the hours. Robert and Anna both got places. Hypocritical is how some people have described my behaviour. I don't know why that's the word that's so often used; I've never criticised anyone for doing what I did, so hypocrisy doesn't come into it.

I'm just concerned and pragmatic. I care deeply about my children's education and am prepared to make sacrifices to ensure that they get the best I can manage. If that means mumbling "I believe in one God, the Father Almighty ... " when I believe nothing of the kind, then so be it.

You can see why churches aren't going to advocate an overhaul of this system any time soon. They get people through their doors who would never normally go to church. They may even convert some of them.

So, would we now convert to Catholicism? If not, what are the alternatives?

Up the road was Southfields Community College where pupils spoke 71 first languages so – guess what? – its results were rubbish (37% of pupils getting five or more GCSEs, including English and maths, with a C-grade or better). Slightly further afield there was a very good school in Tooting, but Tooting has had a couple too many murders for my tastes.

Grammar school, suggested Pam. This being the same Labour-voting Pam I've heard criticising Labour not abolishing grammar schools. Funny how your principles change when it's your children's future at stake.

There aren't any grammars in Merton, but a nearby borough, Sutton, has them and we knew several parents who have used Sutton to escape the worst of Merton's comprehensives.

When I met Merton's head of education, Dave Hill, he admitted that 30% of children at the borough's primaries go elsewhere for their secondary education. Some find a grammar, some go private – I check my bank balance and realise that's not an option – and some families leave London altogether.

That was our most likely option. As I didn't care where I lived so long as it was near a good comprehensive and a bearable commute into London, my search for decent state education took me to six counties. Surrey eventually won.

We spent around £40,000 on stamp duty, solicitors and estate agents and all the rest of it, money that was added to our new mortgage, and endured some of the most stressful months of our lives. We were so desperate for that house in the catchment area of a good comprehensive that we bought it before selling our terraced home in Merton. Here are some diary entries:

3 November 2007 Robert asks: "If we buy this new house will we have to sell the one we're in at the moment?" If we're unsettled, how must it be for an eight-year-old faced with leaving the only house and school he's known. And all because there's no good state secondary near us.

8 November We've started telling friends in Merton that we're planning to move. One mum, says Pam, was welling-up. I don't think it's entirely because we're such lovely people who are a credit to the community so much as the fact that it's more disruption. Already five of Robert's classmates have left, not counting those who've moved out of the area for reasons not to do with schools, such as a job change. It doesn't do much for classroom stability.

11 January 2008. I can tell from Anna's latest cunning plan that she's really not keen on moving. With the lovely logic of a six-year-old, she says: "Why don't we buy the new house and move it here, and put this house over there, then we don't have to move?"

When I repeat this to Robert, he claims credit for the wheeze. I gently suggest that it's important to try to be positive about moving when discussing the subject with Anna. After all, it is mainly positive.

"No it's not, it's 55% negative," he replies, surprising and worrying me with the precision of the answer.

7 February 2008 As someone with two mortgages, it is deeply, grindingly, continually worrying. I woke up this morning and, unable to get back to sleep, checked the time. It was 3.49am.

Later, Pam calls me at work: "I want a rant." She deserves one. Our so-called buyer wants to know if we've got written evidence of permission for the kerb outside our house to be lowered. How should we know? It's not our kerb, it presumably belongs to the council. Our so-called buyer is either a) messing around because he needs to drag things out, having previously claimed not to be in a chain, or b) – and this is Pam's best guess – "He's anal."

Eventually the house-buyer coughed up and we were down to just the one mortgage and a house a short walk from a suburban comprehensive where 63% of the children get five or more GCSE passes, English and maths included. One of the criticisms levelled at people like us is that we are dooming failing schools to more failure by taking our children to better schools. That's an argument that has got its logic back to front. This exodus is a consequence of dire schools, not a cause of them.

Even Dave Hill, Merton's head of education, was understanding. He said he hoped improving performances by their comprehensives would encourage future parents to stay in the borough, but in the meantime didn't blame anyone for avoiding the worst schools.

"If you live in any area and you've got a school that's not scoring around 60% I don't know if I'd really want to send my kid to that school," he said. "I think people have a right to choose something else. We've had schools down in Mitcham scoring 18%, 15% – it's just not acceptable. Why would you want your bright kid with all your family support to go to a school where clearly that school's not going to be able to improve their chances? You'd be mad to."

So we moved, and Robert and Anna transferred to their new school. On their first day, Pam took Anna to the infant classes and I took Robert to the adjacent primary. I left him in the hands of a teacher in the playground and was walking out of the school's gates when, well, here's my diary entry: I hear a voice crying, "Daddy, daddy." I don't have to turn around to know it's Robert. My heart sinks. I'm ready to cry. I turn and do my best to smile and look calm and ask what's the matter. "You've still got my PE bag."

I do – it's still over my shoulder. Robert's fine. I'm the one who's going to pieces.

They quickly settled in, the school is wonderful and they have made loads of friends. Wind forward two years to March 2010 and we're waiting to hear whether Robert has got a place at the local comprehensive. Being in the catchment area of a good school is no guarantee of a place.

Pam calls me at work: Robert's got his place. He'll start there this month.

Nationally, the picture isn't so happy: around 100,000 children did not get into their first choice of secondary school. I'll bet that the second choice often isn't just a bit worse, but dreadful.

Final word, from a mate. "Before I had children I thought that all schools were the same and all parents were moaners. How wrong can you be?"

School Daze: Searching for a Decent State Education by Andrew Penman is published by Mogzilla for £9.99. To order a copy for £7.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

Start with the headline league table figure, the one that tells you how many children get five or more GCSEs with a grade C or better, including English and maths. You can find it here: news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/league_tables/default.stm.

Many schools, mainly struggling ones, hate the GCSE figure with some justification: it ignores the nature of the intake of children. If your child is less able, then it's worth checking the school's contextual value added score, which measures how much children improve (or don't). Any score above 1,100 is impressive; anything below 900 is awful.

Check the Ofsted report, which rates schools on a scale of one to four: one is outstanding, two is good, three is satisfactory, four is inadequate. It does this in areas such as overall effectiveness, achievement and standards, personal development and wellbeing. Bear in mind that the definitions are skewed towards the optimistic, with three of the definitions sounding fantastic or at least reasonable, and at the worst – "inadequate" – not sounding too horrific. To translate: "satisfactory" will mean for most parents "unsatisfactory" and "inadequate" will mean "dire".

Get a detailed breakdown of a school's GCSE results – they're usually handed out at open evenings. I came across two schools in the same town in Surrey that had almost identical pass rates for five GCSE subjects including English and maths of 62% and 63%. But what of the other three subjects? At one of the schools there was a decent sprinkling of good grades in chemistry, physics and biology. At the other, no pupil took chemistry or physics and the highest grade in biology was a D.

Writing in 2007, the BBC education correspondent Mike Baker recalled: "One school went from a score of 82% passing the equivalent of five A*-Cs to just 16% when maths and English were included." You can be sure that if the rules were changed again so that a science or modern language had to be included in those five GCSEs as well as English and maths, then a load of schools with currently impressive scores would suddenly look very poor.

Vitally, ask about the admissions policy. For some schools there's a catchment area with a defined border, for others it depends on how close you live to the school gates, headteacher's study or some other defined point – check before you move house.

Grammars, of course, use the 11-plus, and some comprehensives also have a test to select some of the pupils. Faith schools will want to know how religious you really are, and their criteria for measuring this varies from school to school. When there are more applicants than places, some schools resort to lotteries, or "random allocations" to use the formal expression.

Stick the name of the school into Google along with words such as "vandalism", "knives", "arson" and "metal detector".

Stock up with strong alcohol and antidepressants – you'll need them.

• Family
• School admissions
• Schools
• School tables
• Faith schools

Private schools are three times more successful than state schools at helping pupils gain the top two GCSE grades

Close to a third of all GCSE entries from private schools were awarded either an A or an A*, figures released today suggest, while at 20 fee-paying schools almost every GCSE taken by pupils this summer earned the top grades.

Nationally, 22.6% of entries score an A or above. The figure for the 571 independent schools whose results were reported by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) was 60.2%. But the head of the school that topped the league table, scoring the highest proportion of As and A*s, said the exams were not academically challenging; moves to make them more relevant to students' lives had rendered them too easy for bright pupils, she said.

Cynthia Hall, of Wycombe Abbey girls' boarding school in Buckinghamshire, which last week headed the A-level results table, said: "It may make those subjects more accessible. But from our point of view of academic studies for university, it makes them less 'academic'."

Some 99.3% of GCSEs taken by pupils at Wycombe Abbey were awarded an A or A*, with 89 girls notching up 734 A* grades between them.

In 20 schools, at least 90% of all the GCSEs passed were A or A*. Nearly a third (29.5%) of private schools' GCSE entries got an A* grade, compared to 7.5% nationally.

Many private schools, including Wycombe Abbey, offer International GCSEs (IGCSEs) in some subjects, believing them to be more rigorous than traditional GCSEs. State schools will be able to teach the qualifications from this month, after the education secretary, Michael Gove, reversed a ban imposed by Labour.

IGCSEs accounted for more than one in ten of all entries from ISC schools. The body represents 1,260 of the 2,600 independent schools in the UK.

• GCSEs
• Schools
• Students

Bad advice or unrealistic goals meant thousands of degree hopefuls had no margin for error in their A-level grades

Thousands of teenagers have missed out on a degree place this year because they received poor advice and set themselves unrealistic goals, the head of the university admissions service claims today.

Almost 181,000 applicants are still in clearing, the process that matches students who missed their offers or applied late to unfilled places on degree courses. It represents nearly 27% of those who applied for a university place for this autumn.

This time last year, just over 132,000 applicants were in clearing – 21% of those who applied. The number of vacancies is not known, but is said to be falling fast. Just over 12,344 students have withdrawn from the application system, compared to 9,818 this time last year.

Applicants are allowed to list a preferred university and a back-up institution, known as their insurance choice. The insurance choice usually requires lower grades and is used in case they miss the marks demanded of their first-choicechoice university.

But Mary Curnock Cook, the chief executive of Ucas, told the Guardian that many young people this year had narrowed their chances by picking an insurance institution that required the same grades as their top choice. This gave them no leeway if they failed to achieve the grades demanded by their top-choice university, she said. She warned that students may have been misinformed about how to maximise their chances of a place. Others will have set themselves unrealistic goals.

"I think there is quite a lot of improper usage of the insurance choice," Curnock Cook said. "The advice is to list an insurance university that has lower grades than your top choice. But there is some evidence that the insurance choice isn't being used in that way.

"We need to make sure that young people have good advice from a number of sources, including their parents. It is not just teachers who give them advice. We have to get better information into the system because the system is becoming more competitive. People do need to make realistic choices."

The Institute for Career Guidance agreed that students had adopted the risky strategy of leaving themselves no leeway in case of a missed grade.

Andy Gardner, from the institute, said teenagers want to go to a university that has a good reputation because they have heard this will give them the best chance of a graduate job afterwards, yet the universities with the best reputations all demand high grades.

"All those prestigious universities want three As or two As and a B," he said. "Students need to be realistic because these universities are not going to be flexible if they even slightly miss their grades."

Gardner said students' insurance choices should reflect the grades they have achieved in their AS-levels – the exams at the end of the first year of sixth form.

Alan Bullock, head of student information services at Havant College in Hampshire, said it was not always possible to persuade students to think "slightly outside the box in terms of course choice or university choice".

He said: "If you apply for competitive subjects like economics or English at universities who are all close to the top of the league tables, then however outstanding your grades the margins are going to be extremely tight and there will be very little leeway.

"We always try to encourage our students to strike a careful balance between aspiration and realism and not to be misled by superficial perceptions about what is a 'good' university."

He added that it was becoming more important for university applicants to thoroughly research their insurance choice.

Curnock Cook said clearing had been "fast and furious" this year and that more than 150,000 students would either abandon their application for this autumn or be left without a place in the coming weeks. At some universities, the majority of unfilled places are only open to non-UK and non-European Union students, who pay higher fees. At Kent University, for example, 61 courses have vacancies, but just four of these are open to UK and EU students.

• Clearing
• Higher education
• A-levels
• Schools

Ever wondered what it's like to take charge of raising London's Tower Bridge? Charles Lotter, who's job it is, gave Jill Insley the chance to find out

A crowd of about 200 people is staring intently at me, cameras poised. My heart is pounding. Charles Lotter, a great bear of a man, presses the loudhailer switch and I start to speak: "Staff announcement. The bridge control system is about to be switched on. Please stand clear of all moving machinery, structures and controls."

I am about to raise Tower Bridge and although I know Lotter, a senior technical officer employed by the City of London Corporation at the bridge, has already carried out myriad pre-lift safety checks, I am still as jittery as a cat in a sack.

I press the first button of several in a row and say: "Stand by, bridge crew. About to stop road traffic."

Ahead of us, the traffic lights on Tower Bridge turn to red. Gates come down in front of peeved-looking motorists while four guards put up chains to stop pedestrians walking on to the bridge.

Once the bridge is clear of free-ranging buses and tourists, I push a button to release the immense bolts that hold the two bascules – the moving parts of the bridge – in place. I then push a lever forwards and the bascules gradually rear up in front of the control room. A computer screen shows the degree of angle and Lotter tells me to aim for 45 degrees because the sailing barge Gladys, which has requested passage, is quite small (a huge cruise liner is moored on the other side of the bridge that required the bascules to be fully raised the previous night). I overshoot slightly on the angle, but he says kindly that it doesn't matter.

Gladys glides past regally and soon I'm going through the procedure for lowering the bridge again. The whole process takes about seven minutes, much faster than I had realised. No wonder that, in 20 years of living and working in London, I have only seen the bridge raised once before, even though it opens on average about 13 times a day during peak tourist season (some tourist boats have cheekily attached faux masts so the bridge has to open for the benefit of their passengers), or 1,000 times a year.

Lotter looks just like the type of man you'd expect to be responsible for lifting bridges: tall and broad, totally calm and carrying a considerable air of authority. He is one of three senior technical officers (STO) working at Tower Bridge and although his job is primarily about maintaining the operating machinery and managing the bridge staff, he is also one of five official "bridge drivers", with a sixth undergoing training. This involves controlling the 1,200-tonne bascules, French for "see-saw" or "scales", and a name that reflects the way the huge 450-tonne counter weights pull the bridge up to let vessels taller than 30 feet (9m) through to the next section of the Thames.

So how do you learn to "drive" the bridge? "The only thing that will prepare you is doing it," Lotter says. "It's like riding a bike."

I think about how nervous I was while making the announcements and operating the bridge mechanisms, and ask him what went through his mind the first time he raised the bascules. "I felt just like you – very nervous. But it's my job and you get used to it."

Lotter, a South African by birth, trained as an engineer in his homeland doing an apprenticeship in a steel foundry and then moving into the automobile manufacturing industry, working for a plant that hydraulically pressed out car parts. He moved to the UK 22 years ago, and was working for Reuters in Docklands when he saw the job advertised at Tower Bridge. "I was one of 120 applicants," he recalls. "They were looking for someone with electrical as well as hydraulic experience, and I met both criteria."

He has worked at the bridge for 15 years this month and says: "It's the best job I've ever had. Every day is a challenge. It's never boring."

It is easy to believe that. In 1894 it was set down in law that Tower Bridge should be raised free of charge to allow passage to vessels and, provided they give 24 hours' written notice, that rule still applies.

Some drivers find it hard to accept that river traffic takes precedence. The staff at Tower Bridge are very successful at stopping people taking lemming-like leaps from one bascule to the other as the bridge opens, though some have tried. In 1958 the driver of a number 78 bus found himself caught near the edge of the south bascule as it started to rise and decided to accelerate over the gap rather than back up. No one was seriously injured.

And in May 1997, Bill Clinton's motorcade became separated from Tony Blair's when the bridge opened – again for the Gladys. The two leaders had been for lunch in the nearby Pont de la Tour restaurant, but while Blair's car just made it over, Clinton's was caught by the lights. The bridge staff recount that the second the bridge started lifting, they got a call from Scotland Yard demanding that it be closed again to let Clinton catch up with his buddy. Short of defying the laws of physics this was impossible, and the guards and their president had to wait with guns bristling until the barge had passed through in her own good time.

It's even less boring when something goes wrong with the machinery: if the bridge gets stuck while open, traffic can grind to a halt in the City and a good part of south London. The last time this happened was June when the bridge suffered a power failure: not only were the bascules wedged open, but clients at an event in the walkways above the bridge were left groping around in complete darkness.

The machinery is constantly checked and serviced to make sure it is in good working condition, but problems are inevitable. "If the bridge gets stuck for any reason we contact the City of London police and they close the roads," says Lotter. "It's a piece of machinery and it does go wrong. You sort of half expect it, and when it does happen you really earn your money."

The senior technical officers work in rotation, with two on duty to cover the shifts of any particular day and one resting. Collectively, the shifts cover a 12-hour period from 7am to 7pm, with security staff trained to step in if the bridge needs raising at night.

Lotter has brought up three sons while working at Tower Bridge and says it works well in terms of planning. Because the days follow a very strict pattern – seven days on, three days off, seven days on, four days off – you know exactly when you will have free time. "In terms of planning it's excellent. I know when I'm working in 2015 because of the shift pattern," he says.

STOs all report to the bridge master, the person ultimately responsible for running the bridge, and each has a team of technical officers. STOs are responsible for managing the technical assistants who do everything from setting up event rooms for weddings to cleaning the old steam-powered machinery (replaced by an electro-hydraulic system in the 70s).

A lot of the maintenance and repair work is contracted out these days, and Lotter admits, somewhat ruefully, the technical officers get more opportunity to do hands-on engineering. But he adds: "Some of my job is office-based, but 30% to 40% is still engineering."

The staff all speak affectionately about the bridge – everyone seems to have a deep fascination with her. I ask Lotter if he is interested as an engineer in bridges per se, and he looks at me as though I am mad. "No, if I go somewhere and there's a bridge I might go and look at it, but I don't seek them out," he says. The message is clear: there might be other bascule bridges around the world, but none are as big and grand as Tower Bridge. She deserves special respect.

Although the bridge was completed in 1894, not all the working parts have needed replacing over the years – and those that have are expected to last a long time. The nose bolts in the centre of the bridge were replaced in 2002 – a process that took five weeks, although the bridge was not closed for the full period. "They get inspected very regularly," says Lotter. "But we would expect them to last at least 20 years. They are pretty robust."

Later we stand looking down into the cavernous area that the counter weights swing into as the bascules rise. There is apparently room to stand at the end of the hall, even when the weights are down, but no one in the bridge's 116-year history has been brave enough to try it. "You'd have to be skinny," says Lotter. "It wouldn't work for me."

The traffic passing over the bridge a few metres above our heads makes a muffled boom – 40,000 people cross over every day – and Lotter says if a ship passes by the noise is unbearable. He points out that the bridge was put together with 2m rivets – no soldering was used. "It was really over-engineered, and that's why it will remain standing for a long time to come," he says.

Pay From £34,000 to £42,000 with London weighting. It's possible to earn a further £3,000 or so on top through overtime.

Hours Eight-hour shifts to cover the entire day, either "earlies" (7am to 4pm) or "lates" (10am to 7pm)

Work-life balance Long and often unsociable shifts can make having a social life difficult. On the other hand, you get long breaks of three or four days, sometimes in the middle of a working week, which must seem a luxury. Holidays restricted to two weeks at a time because of City of London Corporation rules.

Highs "Every day is different and offers a new challenge, whether it's dealing with contractors or the guys in marketing."

Lows "When you have to be out on the bridge on a cold winter's morning in the snow or rain dealing with a problem."

• Work & careers
• Engineering general

Exclusive: Education secretary had claimed that more than 700 'free schools' could be established due to high demand

Michael Gove, the education secretary, will next week be forced to announce a dramatic scaling back of the Tories' landmark plans to create a new generation of schools run by parents and voluntary groups.

Labour tonight accused the education secretary of presiding over a "chaotic shambles" after it emerged that as few as 20 free schools are on track to open in September 2011. In June Gove hinted that 700 could be established.

Ed Balls, the shadow education secretary, said: "This is another embarrassment for the education secretary's flawed, unfair and unpopular school reforms. Michael Gove took over a successful department which has helped to deliver record improvements in school standards over more than a decade, but in just a few months he has managed to turn it into a chaotic shambles."

Gove said in June that he had been inundated with expressions of interest from establish a new tier of free schools. "More than 700 expressions of interest in opening new free schools have been received by the charitable group the New Schools Network," he told MPs.

The announcement next week will echo Gove's claim in the summer that more than 1,000 schools had applied to become academies. In the end just 32 are opening this term.

The reduced number was a blow to Gove, who rushed through legislation to allow existing schools to obtain academy status by the start of the academic year. The free schools are due to start opening in a year's time.

One senior Tory said: "Michael clearly massively underestimated the challenge he had decided to undertake."

Cameron regards schools reform as one of the key elements in his plans to create a "big society" in which power is devolved to the grassroots.

Gove is relaxed on the grounds that it normally takes between three to five years to establish a new school. While relatively few free schools will open next year, many more are in the pipeline and will open in due course.

A source close to Gove said: "Under the last government only a couple of parent-promoted schools were created over 13 years. Now, within just four months … there are teachers, parents and community groups who have prepared high quality proposals for free schools starting as early as 2011. There are a significant number of proposals in the pipeline and an announcement will shortly be made about those at the front of the queue who are planning to open next year."

• Education policy
• Michael Gove
• Schools

There are bargains to be had for netbook shoppers on a budget, says Marc Lockley

Last week's article regarding the Apple MacBook sparked a fiery debate about affordability and the usual battle between Apple and PCs. This week we are balancing the books, looking at a few netbooks which are a fraction of the cost of the Apple product.

Netbooks are a great alternative for the budget-conscious student who wants to do their work but not miss out on portability, affordability, sociability and surfability.

As there are a number of choices in this category, please feel free to add your own preferences or price updates below. For the sake of too much repetition the following all come with 1GB of RAM.

Student Computers are selling the Samsung N110 Netbook for £189 with a 250GB hard drive, Windows 7 starter pack and eight hours of battery life. They also offer an Asus Eee PC 1000H that has an 80GB hard drive and a two-year warranty for £182.13.

The Compaq Mini 110c-1010SA comes with a 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHZ processor speed and runs on Windows XP and costs £198.99 with BT and Dabs.com. This netbook won the best budget laptop in a recent Reevoo survey of 1,000 students.

Meanwhile, the Acer Aspire One D250 AOD250-OBb netbook is best priced at £199 with Oyyy.co.uk. It comes with a 160GB hard drive and a 1.6GHz processor.

The Acer Aspire One 533 with an Intel Atom N455 processor, 250GB hard drive and Windows 7 has eight hours battery life and costs £279.99 at Amazon and Argos, although the latter includes free Norton internet security until 28 September. However PC World are offering £50 off your old laptop/netbook thereby reducing it to £229.99.

If you are signing up to a mobile broadband deal you can get the Acer Aspire One 521 (160GB hard drive, Windows 7) for free with PC World, but the mobile deal with Vodafone will cost you £600 over two years.

Amazon are selling the new Asus 1005PE with an Intel Atom N450 1.66GHz processor and a huge 11-hour battery life and Windows 7 for £254.99.

Play.com lead the field for the Samsung N210 at £269.99, which has a battery life of up to 11 hours, Windows 7 and a 250GB hard drive with the Atom N450 processor.

• Consumer affairs
• Saving money
• Student finance
• Netbooks
• Students

Poverty affects grades less among non-white children with social divide noticeable from primary school

A child's social class is more likely to determine how well they perform in school if they are white than if they come from an ethnic minority, researchers have discovered.

The gap between the proportion of working-class pupils and middle-class pupils who achieve five A* to C grades at GCSE is largest among white pupils, academics found.

They analysed official data showing thousands of teenagers' grades between 2003 and 2007. Some 31% of white pupils on free school meals – a key indicator of poverty – achieve five A* to Cs, compared with 63% of white pupils not eligible for free school meals, they found.

This gap between social classes – of 32 percentage points – is far higher for white pupils than for other ethnic groups.

For Bangladeshi pupils, the gap is seven percentage points, while for Chinese pupils it is just five percentage points, the researchers discovered.

The study – Ethnicity and class: GCSE performance – will be presented to the British Educational Research Association conference at Warwick University tomorrow.

It argues that one of the reasons why class determines how white pupils perform at school is that white working-class parents may have lower expectations of their children than working-class parents from other ethnic groups.

The researchers, from the Institute of Education and Queen Mary, both part of the University of London, also found that Chinese pupils from families in routine and manual jobs perform better than white pupils from managerial and professional backgrounds. They also discovered that African and Bangladeshi girls had vastly improved their GCSE grades in the last few years.

Professor Ramesh Kapadia, who led the study, said this may be linked to "cultural aspirations and expectations, as well as parental support for education. This appears to have been the case for Indian and Chinese pupils for many years," he said.

A separate study has found that a similar pattern can be identified for children in primary schools: social class is more likely to determine how well a pupil will perform if that child is white than if they are from other ethnic groups.

Researchers from the University of Warwick analysed the scores of pupils living in the south London borough of Lambeth. White children from well-off homes were the top-performing ethnic group at the age of 11, while white pupils eligible for free school meals had among the worst test results.

Professor Steve Strand, who will present the findings to the British Educational Research Association's conference today, said the effects of poverty are "much less pronounced for most minority ethnic groups".

"Those from low socio-economic backgrounds seem to be much more resilient to the impact of disadvantage than their white British peers," he said.

However, he added that well-off white children may do particularly well because their parents might be "a bit more savvy about ensuring that they go to schools with similar pupils".

"More recent immigrant groups, such as the Portuguese, Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities often see education as the way out of the poverty they have come from. By contrast, if you've been in a white working-class family for three generations, with high unemployment, you don't necessarily believe that education is going to change that.

"All of these factors may combine to make the effect of socio-economic status remarkably strong for white British kids."

Meanwhile, headteachers' leaders have warned secondary schools to consider axing subjects that few pupils take to cope with imminent budget cuts.

The Association of School and College Leaders told the Times Educational Supplement that A-levels in foreign languages, for example, could be scrapped. Last week, French dropped out of the top 10 most popular GCSEs for the first time. "Languages in some schools will be vulnerable," he said. "We are already worried about them and this could speed up the decline."

• Race in education
• Race in schools
• Schools
• GCSEs
• Social exclusion

Middle-class families still dominate best schools despite attempts to close class gap

Middle-class families monopolise the best schools even when a lottery is used to allocate places, according to a study published today.

Lotteries have been seen by some educationists as a way of reducing deep-seated class divisions in the school system. The highest-performing schools tend to cluster in the wealthiest neighbourhoods; if places are allocated according to how near a family lives to a school – rather than by a lottery – children from the poorest areas miss out.

Lotteries are said to be used to distribute places in at least one school in up to a third of councils across England. In Brighton and Hove, all pupils have been assigned secondary school places in this way for the past two years.

But researchers have found lotteries alone fail to give poor children a higher chance of attending a top school, and marginally narrow the likelihood they will win a place at a high-performing school.

Their study analysed how far Brighton and Hove's lottery admissions system had improved the chances of poor pupils attending top schools, and who the main winners and losers were when places were allocated randomly.

The researchers, from the Institute of Education, University of London and the University of Bristol, analysed which schools thousands of pupils attended before and after the lottery system was implemented. The study is being presented to the British Educational Research Association conference today.

Brighton and Hove council does not allocate places entirely randomly. Parents can apply to any school, but priority is given to those who live within a designated catchment area. First, a lottery is used to decide who gets a place within a catchment area. A second lottery is used for any spare places that are not filled by those within a school's catchment area. But there are few spare places for children outside the catchment area of the best schools, so the lottery does not help the poorest, the academics found.

Pupils on free school meals – a key indicator of poverty – were "slightly" more likely to be at school with other pupils on free school meals under Brighton's lottery system than under the previous system that allocated places to families living nearest the school to which they have applied, the academics discovered.

They also found that when places were assigned through a lottery, the brightest pupils, as well as the poorest, lost out. Pupils with high scores were less likely to attend a high-performing school than they would otherwise.

Rebecca Allen, senior lecturer in the economics of education at the Institute of Education and one of the main authors, said Brighton's lottery system would just lead to families relocating to the catchment areas of the best schools. House prices would adjust and keep the poorest families out of these neighbourhoods.

"It seems unlikely the reforms will substantially lower social segregation across schools even in the long run," Allen said.

"Differences in the quality of housing stock across areas of Brighton are deeply entrenched and the boundaries of the new catchment areas mean that families living in the most deprived neighbourhoods have little chance of accessing the most popular schools in the centre of the city."

The study, on the early impact of Brighton and Hove's school admissions reforms, will be published by the Centre for Market and Public Organisation at the University of Bristol.

Currently a pupil eligible for free school meals is 30% more likely to attend a school with exam results – well below the national average than an otherwise identical child from a better-off family.

• School admissions
• Schools

Arran Fernandez, who hit headlines in 2001 for his mathematical prowess, set to become university's youngest student since 1773

At 15, most teenagers are struggling to get their heads around the algebra and equations of maths GCSE. Not Arran Fernandez.

Next month, he will become the youngest student at Cambridge University for 237 years – aged 15 and three months.

Arran, an only child who has been home schooled, will study maths at Cambridge, the youngest to attend the university since William Pitt the Younger was offered a place as a 14-year-old in 1773.

Arran first made headlines in 2001, aged five, when he gained the highest grade in the foundation maths paper. At the time he said he was considering becoming a lorry driver.

He has now decided he wants to be a research mathematician and find a solution to the Riemann hypothesis – the unsolved theory about the patterns of prime numbers that has baffled mathematicians for 150 years.

Fernandez will live with his father, Neil, in rented accommodation. He said he would miss his mother, Hilde, who will stay at the family home in Surrey and see her son at weekends and in university holidays.

The teenager plans to join the university's bird watching society and develop his interest in English literature.

"I'm excited about starting the course and advancing my knowledge of maths," he said. "It isn't the youngest bit that is so important to me – I am more interested in going to Cambridge than comparing myself with other people who go there."

He was not upset that he would be barred from the bar at the college that has offered him a place – Fitzwilliam College.

"I don't feel like I'm missing out on much. Even if I was 18, I wouldn't want to go out drinking," he said.

His parents said they were very proud of their son, who scored an A* in maths GCSE aged seven and has just achieved top grades in maths, further maths and physics A-level.

He will join the likes of Isaac Newton, who also studied at Cambridge, and Stephen Hawking, who like Newton was Lucasian Professor of Mathematics there. But he will also be following the path of other child prodigies, some of whom have come to regret being separated from their peer group and starting university so early.

Sufiah Yusof achieved a place at St Hilda's College, Oxford University, in 1997, to study maths at the age of 13. But In 2001, she ran away after taking her final exam for the academic year. She was discovered working as a waitress in a Bournemouth internet cafe two weeks later, but refused to return home. She claimed her parents had made life difficult for her and lived with a foster family instead. She never finished her course.

In March 2008, a reporter for the News of the World found her advertising as a prostitute under the name Shilpa Lee. She is now said to be working as a social worker.

In 1985, Ruth Lawrence became Oxford University's youngest-ever maths graduate at 13. She had been tutored by her father. She is now a maths professor in Israel, married with two children and has said she would not want to do the same to her son.

Paul Chirico, a senior tutor at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, said Arran had achieved the conditions of his offer to read maths. "Fitzwilliam considers all applications to the college very carefully, regardless of background. Arran was assessed as part of this well-established process and his considerable academic potential was recognised." Children cannot live in student accommodation, because the university cannot carry out criminal record checks on all the other undergraduates.

• Mathematics
• University of Cambridge
• Higher education

My great-aunt Margaret Way, who has died aged 92, taught speech and drama in Taunton, Somerset, for more than 60 years and was an integral figure in the performing arts community there.

Born in Taunton, she took a three-year course when she left school at 17, and began teaching elocution, speech and drama in 1941. One notable lesson in Exeter took place during a second world war bombing raid. After a year's teaching, Margaret joined the ATS, the women's army service. By the end of the war, she had become a captain, in charge of ATS permanent staff at Welbeck Abbey, Nottinghamshire.

On her return to Taunton, she rebuilt her teaching career. She established Saturday morning drama courses for primary school children, taught for more than 40 years at St Christopher's school, in Burnham-On-Sea, and was teaching at Queen's College and King's College, Taunton, until earlier this year.

As well as coaching many entrants for the annual Taunton festival, Margaret became a committee member in 1946, a patron of the festival in 1963, lifetime vice-president in 1978, and competitions secretary for speech and drama in 1979, a position she held for the next 30 years. Since 1935 she had also been a member of the Taunton Thespians, directing and acting.

Margaret was passionately committed to her work. She kept in touch with an incredible number of former pupils, and had taught three generations of several Taunton families. She was always cheerful, warm, lively and fascinating. In 2007 Margaret received the Somerset High Sheriff's award and a Taunton Deane citizenship award. She was appointed MBE in 2009.

She is survived by her brother, Michael, her nephew and niece, Robert and Katherine, and myself.

• Drama and dance

Tibetans around the world celebrate the 50th Tibetan Democracy Day which marks the anniversary of the Dalai Lama's efforts to transform Tibetan society into a democracy

Headteacher says he only substituted word 'fun' into Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree to stop pupils sniggering

An Australian school headteacher has asked students to stop using the word "gay" when singing a classic children's song, but today said no offence was intended – he was simply trying to keep the children from laughing.

Garry Martin of Le Page primary school, in Melbourne, said he instructed students to substitute the line "Fun your life must be" for the original "Gay your life must be" when singing Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree. The song about a native Australian bird is a favourite around campfires.

Martin said he was playing a recording of the song for the students about a month ago when the line "gay your life must be" produced a flurry of giggles throughout the classroom.

Some of the students use the word "gay" as a schoolyard taunt, he said, but don't understand its true meaning. And so, to calm them down, he told them to swap in the word "fun" for "gay".

"It wasn't misplaced political correctness, it wasn't homophobia, there was nothing really calculated in doing it," he said.

"I could've stopped the whole class and gone into a very caring, supportive explanation of gay being quite a reasonable choice in lifestyle that some people make, but I was only talking with seven and eight year olds, and I think that sort of thing is better explained more fully with parents."

His decision erupted into controversy, he said, after one of the students told his parents about Martin's change to the song. Word then spread from the parents to friends to the local newspaper, which ran a story – and Martin found himself being bombarded with angry emails.

"Some think I'm the devil incarnate," he said.

Crusader Hillis, CEO of the gay and lesbian advocacy group The Also Foundation, did not go that far – but he did call the lyrical swap an overreaction.

"It sends a signal to people that just because a word has two meanings, that one of those meanings is unacceptable and that's really putting us backwards," Hillis said.

"Even if it's done for good intentions because 'gay' is being used in schoolyards as a slur, I think they need to use the word as a conversation rather than banning it."

Martin said his decision was a mistake made with the best of intentions, and he plans to speak to the students about how different words hold different meanings across generations.

He also plans to ask students to sing the original version of the song. But, he added: "We might not sing it that often now."

• Australia
• Schools

It seems qualifications in traditional subjects are no longer useful

Earlier in the summer there were rumblings of rage at the recent trend towards educating half the population to degree level. This expansion appears to have spawned the disagreeable but predictable consequence that university qualifications have been devalued. Then, more recently, the news that one in four lap-dancers have degrees was greeted in some quarters with suggestions that lap-dancing was, ergo, a perfectly respectable career choice for intelligent young ladies. Clearly, fewer degrees in English literature and classics should be offered, to make way for the range of degrees in sex work that must be swiftly established.

• Higher education
• Women
• Education policy

Disadvantaged children would be expected to be given priority in order for schools to get incentive reward

Schools would be expected to give priority to poorer children when admitting new pupils and judged on the extent to which they narrow the gap between disadvantaged youngsters and their better-off classmates under plans submitted to government by an influential charity.

In proposals which are being studied closely by education secretary Michael Gove, the Sutton Trust has advised that only schools which agree to give priority to disadvantaged children should get the full benefit of the pupil premium, a new financial incentive to reward schools for accepting poorer pupils.

This funding should be set at £3,000 a child if it is to have an impact, the Sutton Trust's paper suggests.

Schools rated as outstanding by Ofsted should have poorer children automatically entered into their application process, the paper argues.

Ministers are expected to review the school admissions code in the coming weeks amid concern that schools have skewed intakes which do not reflect their neighbourhoods.

The best secondary schools in England take on average just 5% of pupils entitled to free school meals.

The Sutton Trust's paper also calls on government to ensure that academies and parent-led free schools declare how they will deploy resources from the pupil premium to benefit disadvantaged children.

As increasing numbers of schools opt out of local authority control, councils could find a new role monitoring the use of this funding, the charity suggests.

The Sutton Trust, which campaigns to improve social mobility and funds projects aimed at narrowing the gap between rich and poor in education, draws attention to concerns that the coalition's school reforms, by expanding academies and enabling parents to set up their own schools, "will lead to further social segregation among schools and hinder social mobility."

A spokesman for the Department for Education said: "This is a really interesting report that we will study in detail. We agree that the attainment gap in our schools is too wide and we need to ensure that children from poorer backgrounds enjoy far greater opportunities in life.

"That is why we are introducing a pupil premium so that extra funding is targeted at those deprived pupils that most need it, as well as reforming the admissions system to make it simpler and fairer for all."

Britain's biggest children's charity, Barnardo's, warned last week that impenetrable "clusters of privilege" are forming around the best state schools. Poorer families are losing out to better-off neighbours who move house or attend church to get a better education, Barnardo's said.

Proposals to make admissions fairer are being looked at as the government confirmed yesterday that more than 140 schools are expected to convert to academy status in the coming school year.

The schools, which are taking advantage of a new law allowing every school in England to opt out of council control, will take charge of their own admissions.

Some fear this will widen the gap between poorer families and their better-off neighbours. Gove said yesterday the reform would give head teachers more control over how schools are run.

"This will give heads more power to tackle disruptive children, to protect and reward teachers better, and to give children the specialist teaching they need."

Gove wrote to every primary, secondary and special school in England in May inviting them to apply for academy status as the government moved swiftly to pass a new law that enabled schools to convert.

The schools converting this year include the first primaries with academy status. Among them is Britain's biggest primary, Durand, in Brixton, south London.

Greg Martin, Executive Head of Durand Academy, said: "The freedom that academy status brings will allow us to deliver and develop a flexible curriculum to ensure that [our] children reach their full potential."

Meanwhile, business leaders will today call on the government to make it easier for the private sector to help run schools.

In a report published today, the CBI welcomed the expansion in the number of academies and plans to set up free schools.

The employers' group urged ministers to set out a clear strategy for business involvement in education. The CBI wants to see more federations of schools set up, in which good schools support struggling ones. These could be run by a business, the report suggests.

It also urged the government to broaden the range of organisations that can set up a free school. Currently, only parent and teachers' groups or charities are eligible.

Susan Anderson, CBI Director of Education and Skills, said: "Businesses have a key role to play in raising educational outcomes, not just by offering students work experience and career support, or acting as school governors, but also by bringing their vast, largely untapped, reservoir of experience to bear in advising, managing and partnering with schools."

• Schools
• Poverty
• Academies

Margaret Gray, who has died aged 97, was head of the Godolphin and Latymer school in Hammersmith, west London, from 1963 to 1973. Her ability to listen to and empathise with the girls, especially the younger ones, made her the kind of head every school wants.

For all of us descended from the Gray family of Edinburgh, which still has its name above the door of the large hardware shop in George Street, Margaret was the undoubted star of her generation. She was the youngest child of Mary and the Rev Herbert Gray, a Scottish Presbyterian minister who founded the Marriage Guidance Council in 1938.

Margaret proved an apt pupil at St Mary's Hall, Brighton, and a diligent undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge, before taking a postgraduate fellowship to Smith College in Massachusetts. Her professional life began in 1937, teaching history at Westcliff high school for girls in Essex. She went on to head the history department of Mary Datchelor girls' school in Camberwell, south London.

In 1952 she took her first headship, at the Skinners' Company's school in Stamford Hill, north London. In 1963 she moved to Godolphin and Latymer. Soon after her official retirement, in 1973, the school lost its voluntary aided status and had to either amalgamate with another school as a comprehensive or go private. It chose the latter, but Margaret was left in a dilemma. She wanted the school to keep what made it special but strongly disapproved of entrance restricted to the wealthy. She launched, and for many years ran, a bursary scheme.

My first encounter with Margaret happened when she was in her 30s while I was doing national service at the air ministry and living in London with two of my great-aunts, strong admirers of their niece Margaret and particularly her "wonderful" driving. I was offered a trip and soon deduced, from her alarming speed between and up to traffic lights, that she was not a woman who wasted time. In Who's Who she listed motoring as a main recreation along with gardening and walking. Even at 91 she was driving around the Scottish Highlands, blessedly free of traffic lights. At school she had used traffic lights outside her office: green for "come in", amber for "please wait", red for "not free for ages".

Margaret was once asked if she had ever been in love. "Yes, but never enough to get married," she replied. She was always surrounded by friends, nephews and nieces, including the journalist Katharine Whitehorn. She finally settled in Kew, south-west London, with two other retired schoolteachers. She was a tireless correspondent and a regular assistant at the local Oxfam shop.

• Teaching

Any student willing to engage will get good value for money

The Browne review into the funding of higher education has led to a debate on whether a university education provides value for money. In the last three months, there have been two comment pieces by arts students complaining about the "paucity of teaching" within their degrees and suggesting that the disparity between arts and science contact hours should be reflected in the fees.

I'm entering my third year of a chemistry degree at the University of Manchester and I would not be surprised if, as a result of the Browne review, science undergraduates are asked to pay considerably higher fees without any real debate about whether they actually get more value for money than arts students.

Last year, my fees "bought" between 15 and 20 contact hours a week. Eight hours of lectures, nine of labs, along with regular tutorials and workshops. I got the chemicals I needed to run my experiments, the support I needed to do them safely and the journal subscriptions necessary to place my experiments in context. So far so good.

And what experiments did I do? The same standard set of experiments that were performed last year and will be performed next year. That's not a complaint; learning the basic techniques is an essential part of any science degree. But it does preclude original thinking; all my assessments to date have involved "right" answers that can be logically deduced from the available knowledge.

By comparison arts students, if they are lucky, get six to eight hours of lectures, seminars and tutorials a week. Instead of labs and workshops, they get extensive reading lists: they are "paying for the privilege of reading textbooks". So for three years and almost £10,000 in tuition fees, what do they really get?

Well, for one thing, they get a sounding board for their ideas. Once arts students have worked through their reading list, they're going to have ideas about what they've read and how these ideas fit into the grand scheme of things. At university, they get access to a knowledgeable faculty and, through discussions, can clarify and better express their ideas.

Their fees also pay for the supply and maintenance of the huge collection of books necessary to develop the required depth of knowledge – otherwise known as the library. It's a telling fact that at the main University of Manchester library, there is part of one floor devoted to science and nearly five wings devoted to the arts.

Another, more abstract, way of looking at value for money is by examining the skills learned through a degree. Again, arts students apparently don't get value for money. What do they learn? How to read a book? How to analyse a theme? Compare that to a science student who has potentially learned the basics of probing the nature of the universe.

Yet the majority of graduate entry jobs simply require a degree, irrelevant of specialisation, so there must be something valuable about an arts degree. All students are essentially taught the same skills; the ability to work self-sufficiently, a toolkit of problem-solving methods and the skills and confidence to apply it in unknown situations.

The more you put in to your degree the more you get out. Those who take the time to seek out lecturers and use all the resources their fees pay for get far higher value for money than those who simply cruise through. Also, whether you're studying 10th-century Norse poetry or the stereochemistry of heterocyclic molecules, degree-level study requires a stupendous amount of work to reach the standard required.

Arts and science degrees are different but equal, and equally valuable. So please, stop demonising science students because we spend more time in labs and less time in the library.

• University teaching
• Tuition fees
• Higher education
• Arts
• University funding
• Lecturers

As a new term begins at Waterloo Road, which are the programmes it should it be taking lessons from?

This week the nation's kids return to school, all bright-eyed and smelling of hope. Ditto the cast of Waterloo Road – basically Holby City for former soap actors who don't have complexions that suit medical scrubs – which will also return for its sixth series tonight.

It's all change at the school, with Amanda Burton's fiery new headteacher replacing Eva Pope's fiery old headteacher, and the likes of Angela Griffin and Denise Welch replaced by someone from Waking the Dead and, later in the series, him out of Spandau Ballet. Still, at least Grantly Budgen – the marvellously gloomy English teacher with a face that resembles a melting waxwork of Geoffrey Palmer with gout – is still around. That's something.

So let's ring in the new term – at Waterloo Road and elsewhere – by revisiting six of our favourite school-based TV shows. As ever, don't hesitate to remind me of any glaring omissions...

The definitive school-based show. Grange Hill ran for so long that several successive generations could each take their own iconic moments from it. Some loved Grange Hill for Tucker Jenkins, some for Just Say No and some for the time that little Kevin accidentally took LSD and got freaked out by a piece of chalk. And the flying sausage. Never forget the flying sausage.

Post-This Life Andrew Lincoln vehicle that destroyed the myth of the teacher as the uptight fuddy-duddy. Instead, Teachers showed that educators could get drunk and have as much casual sex as anybody else. And what's more, they could do it to a soundtrack of forgettable millennial indie music, too.

Boasting a theme tune that rivalled even Grange Hill for catchiness, Please Sir! followed the adventures of John Alderton's idealistic new teacher Bernard Hedges in a school where all the pupils appeared to be in their mid-30s. Creepy.

Like a funnier Beverly Hills 90210, Saved by the Bell showed us how great life was at Bayside high school under the watchful eye of dumbly benevolent principal Mr Belding. Not always that great, as it turns out.

The show that accurately describes what it's like to be a student. So long as you're needy and self-infatuated. And you can't go for more than five or six seconds without bursting into a semi-ironic rendition of a 1980s power ballad. And you mistakenly think that it's clever and cute to add the letters 'Gl' to the start of most things you say. And you're relentlessly annoying.

Not entirely school-based, but memorable for its classroom scenes nonetheless. Charlie Brown's teacher refused to speak English to her students, preferring to communicate via a bizarre wordless method involving a wah-wah trumpet. The knock-on effect of this is that Charlie Brown and his friends failed to learn anything at school, dooming them to a lifetime of head-smackingly inane pseudo-philosophical conversations with each other. Let this be a lesson to teachers everywhere – it helps to use actual words during lessons.

Gloriously observed Australian import Summer Heights High, genuinely terrifying The Demon Headmaster and good old Sweet Valley High. Also worth noting - despite their not-entirely-classroom-based nature - E4's The Inbetweeners, and Skins.

• Drama
• Television
• Glee
• Schools

A list of the 32 schools converting to academy status this month

Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet

Kemnal Technology College (part of the Kemnal Trust), Bromley

Brine Leas High School, Cheshire East

Fallibroome High School, Cheshire East

St Buryan Primary School, Cornwall

Seaton Infant School, Cumbria

Broadclyst Community Primary School, Devon

Uffculme School, Devon

Cuckoo Hall Primary School, Enfield

The Cotswold School, Gloucestershire

Watford Grammar School for Boys, Hertfordshire

Watford Grammar School for Girls, Hertfordshire

Lampton School, Hounslow

The Westlands School (in federation with The Woodgrove Primary School), Kent

The Woodgrove Primary School (in federation with The Westlands School), Kent

Heckmondwike Grammar School, Kirklees

Durand Primary School, Lambeth

The Giles School, Lincolnshire

Eaton Mill Foundation Primary School, Milton Keynes

Healing School, a Specialist Science and Foundation College, North East Lincolnshire

Tollbar Business Enterprise & Humanities College, North East Lincolnshire

Northampton School for Boys, Northamptonshire

George Spencer Foundation School and Technology College, Nottinghamshire

Arthur Mellows Village College, Peterborough

The Chadwell Heath Foundation School, Redbridge

Holyrood Community School, Somerset

Huish Episcopi School, Somerset

Westcliff High School for Boys, Southend-on-Sea

Hartismere School, Suffolk

Audenshaw School, Tameside

Urmston Grammar School, Trafford

Hardenhuish School, Wiltshire

Source: Department for Education

• Academies
• Schools
• Education policy
• Michael Gove

Joint teaching venture sees the London university forge presence in funding-rich Asia

Imperial College London is to set up a new medical school in Singapore in the latest move by an elite British university to establish a presence in Asia.

Jointly run by Imperial and Singapore's Nanyang Technological University, the medical school will teach over 750 students when it is fully established, the majority of whom will be local residents.

Professor Martyn Partridge, who holds Imperial's chair in respiratory medicine and is to be senior vice dean of the new school, said Imperial had developed an "innovative" course employing electronic learning and simulations of patient care, which the university hoped to develop further in Singapore.

The medical school will be publicly funded. Imperial, which was invited to set up the partnership by Singapore's government, will benefit financially from sharing expertise and the college hopes the partnership will lead to long-term benefits. The college aims to tap into "generous research funding" available in the Asian city-state, Prof Partridge said.

"I don't think anybody knows the exact bottom line, but I can categorically say that Imperial is not going to do this in any way at a loss."

International students are a significant source of revenue for British universities, and increasing numbers want to study here. Overseas applications rose from just over 55,000 last year to over 71,000 this February. At present the proportion of overseas medical students at UK schools is capped at 7.5%. A foreign medical student who starts at Imperial this autumn can expect to pay £26,250 a year.

Other top British universities which have expanded abroad include Nottingham, which has a campus in Malaysia, while Liverpool has set up a partnership with a Chinese university in Suzhou, near Shanghai.

The new medical school will admit its first 50 students in 2013. A British student who trained at the Singapore school would have no automatic right to practise in the NHS, as it is outside the EU. However, the college hopes to set up student exchanges between the UK and Singapore.

Sir Keith O'Nions , rector of Imperial College London, said: "We are extremely proud to be working with Singapore, a country we have long admired for its support and application of world-class science, engineering and medicine.

"We have many members of the Imperial family already in Singapore — the country is home to nearly 2,000 of our alumni."

Paul Madden, British High Commissioner for Singapore, said the partnership was a further example of the "deep linkages" between Britain and Singapore in science, culture and trade.

Imperial's school of medicine, formed in 1997, is one of the largest in the UK. Over 2,000 undergraduates and 500 postgraduates studied there in the last academic year.

• Imperial College London
• Medicine
• Singapore
• Higher education