Private schools have been told to prepare for a period of amalgamations, downsizing and even closures as declining birth rates hit the sector.

They will need to be more successful in selling themselves and poaching pupils away from state schools if they are to survive in a shrinking marketplace.

The stark warning comes in the wake of figures from the Independent Schools Council showing a 0.6 per cent drop in privately educated children after ten years of growth.

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Aston Villa Football Club is at the forefront of a Pop Idol-style search to find a new star - in India.

The club, along with Delhi-based private football school the Super Soccer Academy, is holding talks with Indian TV companies Zee Sports and ESPN, as well as Reebok India, to televise a football-based reality show in India this autumn.

The winner of the televised contest, set to be broadcast to as many as three-quarters of a billion people throughout the sub-continent, will secure a place at the Premiership club's Villa Academy and be given the chance to learn the skills to become a professional.

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Large numbers of people on low and middle incomes are paying more than their fair share of council tax, researchers from a Midland university have claimed.

The study from the University of Warwick found that the value of the property people lived in was linked more closely to income and people?s ability to pay tax than was often thought.

But it added that figures from the Office for National Statistics showed people on middle and low incomes spend proportionally more of their income on council tax than those with high incomes.

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Courts should hand out tougher sentences to criminals wearing "hoodies" to hide their faces, according to a Birmingham MP.

Steve McCabe (Lab Hall Green) said judges should punish offenders for trying to hide their identity.

He also backed shopping centres who have banned hooded sweatshirts in a clampdown on thuggish behaviour.

The MP entered the controversy about so-called 'hoodies' when he spoke in the House of Commons.

And Meriden MP Caroline Spelman (Con) revealed she was scared to allow her 14-year-old daughter into Birmingham city centre in the evening.

She said: "Bit by bit, we are surrendering our town centres to the yobs when night falls."

More on these stories in Wednesday's Birmingham Post