Anthony Wallersteiner, headmaster of Stowe, which charges £12,000 a term and numbers Sir Richard Branson and Chelsy Davy among former pupils, has been lambasted for moaning about the (minimal) success of schemes to get more state school students into Oxford and Cambridge.
Wallersteiner called it ‘social engineering’ and compared the culture of criticism levelled at private schools to anti-Semitism; an analogy Labour peer Andrew Adonis described as ‘disgraceful’, while MP David Lammy asked if The Times (which published Wallersteiner’s comments) was ‘having a laugh’.
I have two things to say about this. First: maybe if we stopped being so compulsively reverent toward Oxbridge graduates, stopped unthinkingly giving them all the good jobs and voting them into Government in unrepresentative quantities, the whole issue of who does and doesn’t get in, in the first place, might be less fraught. Second: we hear a lot about the privilege of private education, and equal amounts of chippy griping from those who didn’t receive one – but we rarely hear how amazing state schools are. I don’t mean ‘rise up out of bad OFSTED ratings to Outstanding then get a Channel 4 documentary made about you + a visit from an Obama’ amazing.
I mean: intrinsically amazing, precisely because they aren’t private. I consider my scrappy, bargain basement Devon comprehensive school education one of the best things that ever happened to me. I owe it so much. The shining exam results and subsequent Oxbridge education I didn’t get? No. Everything else I’ve ever needed or wanted, relied upon, or enjoyed? Pretty much.
I owe it my sense of humour. There are two ways to flourish in state education: you can be funny or you can be hard. Hard was out of the question – I realised this aged 11, during an altercation at a bus stop; people got kicked, so I went Route Funny. I got timing. Twinkle. An impulse for naughtiness. Gall. Balls. Cheek.
I owe it my own mind. When hothousing and an expectation of A*s are not on the table: free-wheeling amateur philosophising, seeing the world your way (as opposed to the way others/exam boards think you must) and rogue contrariness will triumph. I owe it my inability to respect, or even recognise, social status. The idea anyone might be intrinsically better than me, or I than them, by dint of birth? Nah, mate. Funny or hard? Now we’re talking. I owe it my fundamental ease with the opposite sex. I can flirt like fury – and I can be platonic, just as well; because nothing co-educates better than a comp.
And last, and definitely least, but anyway... I owe my state education never having to apologise for anything I achieve on account of private school privilege.