Education minister Michael Gove will today make a conference speech encouraging independent schools to start their own academies.

Anthony Seldon, Master of Wellington College, welcomed the move, saying that state education often "reduces education to a kind of factory process", and influence from independent schools could make them focus on building character and personality.

But John Claughton, of King Edward's School, Birmingham, says that bringing bright children from state schools into independent schools, giving them "direct experience" of private education, is a better way to get their "DNA" to rub off on children.

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