I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is.

There is so much that is positive, wonderful even, about state schools. At a state school your kids will learn to live alongside and appreciate other kids from many diverse and different cultures.

Sending your child off to school for the first time in their life is terrifying.

I'm the co-chair of the PTA at my kids' school, Ashmount Primary, in north Islington, London.

I would like it to be a legal requirement for all businesses to be linked to a charity.

I spent my entire childhood living abroad because of my father's occupation, so we were on long-haul flights all the time.

My parents' generation's benchmark was simple: Fat Equals Bad.