When parents choose a school they want for their child, they are looking for one which will teach the subjects well, so pupils can read and count properly, and go on to learn and be inspired. In our education system we need to give children these tools so they get jobs and take their place in the community.

The idea that going to university is the ‘be all and end all’ is starting, rightly, to wear off, especially because of the fees charged and also unemployment among graduates.

Someone who takes up an apprenticeship may well earn more as a skilled tradesman than another person coming out of university without an actual skill needed by others.

In many ways it is a pity that young women, and men, who would have considered nursing are put off because training now happens in the glass and steel universities.

It should be ‘horses for courses’ with schooling: we need scientists and we need carpenters and nurses.

But parents also want their children in well-disciplined school environments, free from bullying, with a good moral overall context in the school day.

The notorious Trojan Horse inquiry has revealed schools which have smuggled hardline Islamist teaching and customs into the school curriculum and the school culture.

A strict dress code is applied to girls and they are separated from boys. Sharia customs of washing and eating are imposed. The Q’uran is the one religious text studied.

Most British parents would recoil from such a school day for their children, but many Muslim parents see no problem with it.

What is now ‘normal’ culture? Many parents do not want their children subjected to the trendy new sex education classes and disagree with them morally. Should they withdraw their children? Teaching on abortion, likewise, is very sensitive. Families should be allowed to give their views to their children.

Our multi-cultural society faces fragmentation: where do we find the morally right culture for schools?

Churches, of course, want the kind of culture that Jesus lived out: kind, non-judgmental, and caring, with a deep faith in a loving God.

It is important that the Churches do not lose that vision. Jesus, himself, showed real concern for ‘these little ones’ – a simple but deep maxim for educationalists.