We forget the headlines from the months before Tony Blair became Prime Minister: “Schools ? crumbling classrooms ? and unwelcome wildlife”; “Standards too low in half of primary schools”; and “Parents raffle car to pay new teacher”.

There is what looks like half a nursery piling up outside the main reception area at Salisbury School, a comprehensive in Edmonton, north London. Not nursery in the sense of four-year-olds, overly anxious to make an early start on checking out their secondary school options, but rather the plant variety. Workmen are taking advantage of the spring sunshine to give the school’s entrance a face-lift.

The rise of social networking sites such as MySpace among office workers looks set to become responsible for more lost working hours than the flu. For schools, the sites pose more serious problems. Stories of paedophiles grooming children terrify parents and teachers, and anyone logging on to the sites can easily find examples of bullying.

Alan Johnson, the Education Secretary, is right to want independent schools to do more to justify their charitable status. Opening up their science facilities and teaching to the state sector might improve opportunities for state school pupils and should not be rejected on the grounds that it is patronising. But this is not a one-way street. State schools have things to learn from independent schools. Bringing the sectors together would also be good for privately-educated students, introducing them to a wider range of lifestyles and attitudes than they encounter in the relatively sheltered worlds in which they live.

Hilary’s advice

With weeks to go, exam season is getting too much for Tony Barrett.

I think I’ve got it right. Grammar schools are good things and will be protected by the Tories, but their numbers will not be increased. Among the plethora of choice that parents are now subjected to there will be no button marked “grammar school?” Access to this particular social good, an effective and well-regarded school, will remain a matter of luck, a sort of postcode lottery - just like access to good comprehensives.

The days of the book may not be numbered after all, research published by Roehampton University in Surrey suggests. An overwhelming finding among children from 22 primary schools and 24 secondaries is that reading is one of the activities they still enjoy, despite the advent of new technologies. So perhaps the days of commuter trains being packed with laptop luvvies and pervaded by the thud, thud, thud of the bass guitar as people listen to music via their headphones will be a thing of the past when the next generation leave school. Here’s to wishful thinking.

Hilary’s advice

Friday lunchtime at an East Sussex comprehensive, and three studious-looking boys are tucking in to the latest fare to emerge from their school kitchen in the wake of the Government’s assault on “unhealthy” menus.

I think I’ve got it right. Grammar schools are good things and will be protected by the Tories, but their numbers will not be increased. Among the plethora of choice that parents are now subjected to there will be no button marked “grammar school?” Access to this particular social good, an effective and well-regarded school, will remain a matter of luck, a sort of postcode lottery - just like access to good comprehensives.

The days of the book may not be numbered after all, research published by Roehampton University in Surrey suggests. An overwhelming finding among children from 22 primary schools and 24 secondaries is that reading is one of the activities they still enjoy, despite the advent of new technologies. So perhaps the days of commuter trains being packed with laptop luvvies and pervaded by the thud, thud, thud of the bass guitar as people listen to music via their headphones will be a thing of the past when the next generation leave school. Here’s to wishful thinking.

Liz Lightfoot, the Telegraph’s Education Editor, answers your questions.

…but all children should learn to touch-type, says Liz Lightfoot.

Stephanie Calman finds that five out of every seven days are exactly the same.

I thought of our tendency to collective hypocrisy the other day, when a group of vice-chancellors was discussing the problems of widening access to higher education. It was a gloomy discussion. Huge efforts were being made to reach out to schools and families that did not traditionally see themselves as university feeders. Undergraduates were all out proselytising and evangelising the benefits of a university education. Yet we are still stuck on 14 per cent of Group D who make it to university, and 77 per cent from Group A, and that position has been unchanged for 20 years.

At first sight, it looks as though Gordon Brown as Prime Minister will continue to give education the high priority Tony Blair gave it ? but with less glitz and perhaps fewer initiatives. That will be welcome to heads and teachers who have long complained that they are sinking under the weight of Government demands.

Hilary’s advice

This week marks the start of public exams for more than a million scared teenagers. Like their parents and grandparents before them, they will file into a school hall or gym, sit down at a single desk, and, pen in hand, wait for the clock to start ticking.

An intriguing insight into the realities of the job of running a primary
school has been provided by a Schoolzone focus group consisting of primary
head-teachers from different parts of the country. The organisation, which
brought together six heads, used video and web conferencing technology
simultaneously in the latest of its projects to gather and disseminate the
views of senior staff working at the sharp end of education.

Marianne Kavanagh shines a light into the dark corners of school orchestral manoeuvres.

Hopes were high at a top-level conference in Brussels last week of a push towards the millennium goal of getting all the world’s children into primary school. The Chancellor Gordon Brown, who convened the summit, outlined a vision of “being the first generation in history to send every child to school”. He pledged to work with countries, charities and corporations to make it happen.