I was confirmed at my prep school at the age of 13.

I didn't have a very starry school career, I was medium to above average, nothing special.

Intelligent life on a planet comes of age when it first works out the reason for its own existence.

Any teaching of falsehoods in science classes should certainly be identified and stopped by school inspectors. School inspectors should be looking at science teachings to make sure they are evidence-based science.

How any government could promote the Vardy academies in the North-East of England is absolutely beyond me. Tony Blair defends them on grounds of diversity, but it should be unthinkable in the 21st century to have a school whose head of science believes the world is less than 10,000 years old.

But high school is a better age to absorb what's going on there.