Class system

When my wife said she thought we should educate our three children at comprehensive schools, it was with a degree of trepidation that I went along with her. I was thankful to save the several hundred thousand pounds it would probably have cost to send them to fee-paying schools, money which I at least showed scant sign of being able to earn. But I wondered whether the education would be good enough. Like many a middle-class parent, I was frightened of a system of which I had no personal experience. My parents had tightened their belts to pay for my schooling, and I feared I was failing to give my children the advantages I had myself enjoyed. Articles in the Tory press which suggested that all comprehensive schools were useless struck me as unfair, but I also feared there might be something in this.

Five years after this experiment began, our children are doing well, and I have tumbled to rather an obvious point.