State schools, not private schools, are the real sponsor of inequality in Britain

In today’s Observer, Will Hutton unwittingly highlights the poverty of the inequality debate in Britain. Gifted writers like him bang on about private schools the whole time rather than look at the far greater problem: inequality within the state system. He devotes a column moaning about the schools which, I suspect, will supply a good chunk of the students he’ll meet in his role as Principal of Hertford College, Oxford.

“Social apartheid,” he says: a lazy analogy, suggesting a binary divide between state and private. In fact, the truth is far worse. Britain doesn’t have a two-tier system: we have a multi-tier system where educational attainment is directly linked to parental wealth. Are you semi-poor? Then your kids can expect semi-bad results. Stinking rich? Then your state school will be one of the best around. And so it continues (see graphic, above). Private schools educate just 7pc of pupils; state schools educated 93pc.