‘Repeat after me, gentlemen: “Thank you for not letting me into your Oxbridge college because I belong to the wrong social class and I have been too well taught.’’ ’
I do hope they include this catechism in the new ‘gratitude’ lessons that they’re about to introduce at Eton. They should do because it’s true. Across the country, private school parents who have scrimped and saved about £40,000 a year for fees are increasingly finding that their sacrifice is being rewarded by near-automatic Oxbridge rejection for their blameless offspring.
And who is speaking out against this class war-driven injustice? Almost no one. Which is why Anthony Wallersteiner, headmaster of Stowe, took so much flak for telling it like it is. ‘The rise of populists and polemicists has created a micro-industry in bashing private schools,’ he told the Times. ‘There’s a much more concerted effort by [Oxbridge] admissions tutors to drive down the number of places given to independent schools,’ he went on — to a deafening chorus of near silence from his fellow public school heads.
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