Parents are being encouraged to use a "whistleblowing" hotline to inform on other parents who they think may have lied or cheated their way into getting a place for their child at a popular school.

The words look so simple in a paper setting out the task ahead: "Change public face of Gorton Mount". But for a primary school in the midst of an inner city gangland area, the reality takes a bit longer.

Nearly one in six children in England failed to gain a place at their first choice secondary school this year, Government figures showed today.

Philip Bujak has a dream. The chief executive of the Montessori St Nicholas Charity hopes that one day every state primary school in the country will have a Montessori teacher on their staff. But with only five state primaries using Montessori practices in the UK, he knows he has a mountain to climb.

The future is incontestably digital: the internet is changing the way we do all sorts of things, from shopping to working to running our social lives. Education, though, has so far largely remained anchored in the old world – but even this is beginning to change.