More than one in five boys and one in seven girls have difficulty in learning to talk, according to research released last week by Jean Gross, England’s “Communications Champion&r

Sometimes statistics appear which leave you gasping. So it was when I read the news that 18 per cent of schools now offer “circus skills” as a school sport.

One in ten white boys is leaving school with fewer than five GCSEs, the benchmark for basic secondary school education, according to figures released by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in response to a Freedom of Information request.

In Saturday’s Guardian, Ben Goldacre dismembered a Home Office study designed to evaluate a drug education project in schools.

School league tables are worthless as a basis for choosing a school, and would be best left unpublished.

Figures published today by the School Food Trust show that the Government’s target of increasing the take-up of school meals is going to be missed. Is this a failure? Yes and no.

Journalists may have to face the ending of the system by which they get an early sight of official statistics, under embargo.