What you pay for

The gulf between state education and independent schools grows wider every year, says Fraser Nelson – just look at the results

Why choose private education? For years — including five long ones spent at boarding school — I was convinced there was no good answer to this question. For my family, it was an obvious choice: my father had been dispatched to work in Cyprus, and his employer, the RAF, would pay for my boarding school fees if I wanted to stay in Scotland.

Even a 13-year-old could see the logic. But once there, it baffled me: why would parents who did have the choice spend so much money?

Now, as a parent, I know the answers all too well. The horrid truth is that an educational apartheid has arisen in England — the disparity in attainment between private schools and statefunded schools is the biggest of any country in the world save Brazil.