There is a radical alternative for parents fed up with the high fees of England's top private schools: they can send their children thousands of miles across the world to New Zealand.
The country has a network of independent schools famed for their high quality. Originally modelled heavily on British public schools, they have come, some say, to surpass them. New Zealand's private institutions beat UK rivals to top the world rankings among English-speaking schools in maths and science, according to last year's prestigious Pisa survey of achievement among 15-year-olds published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. British schools did better only in reading.
