Not making the grade

TODAY, thousands of parents will suffer the disappointment of being informed they have failed to get their sons and daughters into their preferred secondary schools.

Instead, they must entrust their child’s precious education to their second or third choices. The estimated number let down is a record 115,000 – one in five pupils.

The crisis has been fuelled by a baby boom after Tony Blair threw open Britain’s borders. Anyone warning that public services might buckle was denounced as a scaremonger or, worse, a racist.

But with net migration still running at epic levels, it doesn’t take a genius to conclude the problem will escalate.