Posh and Posher: Why Public School Boys Run Britain

Bumps - I think I was being a tad ironic about the Guardian .

Your Oxbridge point is interesting, and it reinforces what Andrew Neil was arguing: If state schools could give a larger number of children the level of academic education they need to get into Oxbridge (and other RG universities) - they we would regain the meritocracy we appear to have lost.

Hogs

Not sure you are totally right about the law - plenty of Oxbridge comprehensive school children (such as myself) at my old magic circle firm.

Personally I think Oxbridge is the feeder into the elite - and of course you have a much better chance of getting there from a public school. But there are plenty of state school children at Oxbridge too, and it is a path into the elite for them, because they make friends with all the public school types and get in on the connections.

Eg my BF at college went to a very famous girls school. We both wanted to do law. I did work experience with their family friend who was a judge. When I applied to said magic circle firm, I was interviewed by another family friend of theirs who was a partner, and got accepted. I don't know to this day whether BFs mother had a little word with the interviewer but it is possible that she did.

Not that I am saying this way of doing this is desirable, but I do think once state school kids are at Oxbridge, the playing field levels out a bit. Of course your chances of making it into Oxbridge in the first place are better if you are from a public school, not least because public schools educate children to be ambitious, driven, and to expect a lot of themselves.

Jacks

The Guardian is the preserve of Oxbridge lefties, I am afraid!

Bumps

Hogs - you might be right about the upper tiers of law and the media (hopefully not the Guardian).

But surely the point Andrew Neil made was that for 33 years our country had state educated Prime Ministers.

In fact, it seemed that the era of the public school prime minister was gone.

As he says in the programme - we had a meritocracy (of sorts) and we lost it. How and why did the public schools regain their influence?

I agree with you. I want a meritocratic society. That's what Thatcher and Andrew Neil want. I want ordinary children to be able to go to top quality grammar schools (just like Harold Wilson and Margaret Thatcher did in the past). I want our state schools to be as good as our public schools.

In the modern competitive world we need all of our talent to be developed to the maximum.

Claig: a Harvard Summa Cum Laude will be treated on her merits and her secondary education will, rightly, be deemed an irrelevance. In the UK a Cambridge double first's secondary education will still be of importance if he is planning on entering the media, politics or the law. In these areas, a public school education is still an advantage and I believe that we do the country a disservice by perpetuating the system of privilidge that goes with it.

As a disclaimer I went to public school myself and I loathe the fact that I am still asked at the age of 40 where I went to school. I usually answer by giving the name of my university and grad school as the Americans do.

Oneglass - agree. Informed private school parents use the FT league table (which takes out the softer A levels) - i think there was one grammar in the top 10 last year.

Private primary education is better than public because it doesn't have to stick at the NC. So those children will get a better start.

"Tutors and workbooks were also readily available for those whose parents wanted to prepare them more throughly, and of course for those whose parents could afford it."

I don't know when you're referring too but tutoring children has become common only since state education deteriorated.

Primary schools were adequate preparation then for exams at eleven, and they aren't any more.

Though I suppose if they tested corking up as a Victorian chimney sweep it might help, or examined their mums on poster projects and modelmaking.

well found out, oneglass. That is very interesting.

Looking at that list of grammars apparently outperforming Eton et al...

Lots of psychology and PE A levels at Colyton. Plus business studies.

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www.colytongrammar.devon.sch.uk/results/alevels.htm]]

I know Tifffins doesn't do as many of the soft subjects,

um, newwave, not daft thank you for that though. 'Tis always nice to hurl a mediocre insult or two.

Read properly and you will see clearly what my meaning is. Perhaps I shall elaborate - while Labour continually hound out where the Tories went to school they don't exactly boast about their own schooling/uni links. And those who were helped by the Grammar school system have denied the next generation the opportunity to find that ladder up and out of their current situation.

The problem with the grammar school system was that it wasn't based on raw ability, it was based on how well you did in particular assessments. It was a measure of how well educated you were up to that point, not your true potential.

For example, middle class children were more likely to have a larger vocabulary because of what they heard at home and this undoubtedly gave them an advantage in the language sections of the test. Tutors and workbooks were also readily available for those whose parents wanted to prepare them more throughly, and of course for those whose parents could afford it.

If selective state schools were brought back, I don't see how these issues would be resolved.

I think, though that we should congratulate Andrew Neil for this programme - he makes good points for a relative insider (now).

I would like to see a similar investigating why women who go to public school don't go the same route so overwhelmingly too -perhaps a good follow-up? Claire Short perhaps??

Couldn't agree more Cikals

Who cares what school they went to, I went to a shitty inner city comp does that mean I'm more suitable to be PM? Of course not, the educational background of the PM is irrelevant

We would be childish if we didn't realise how many of the cabinet went to Eton and other public schools. It is because we are grown up and politically aware that we notice these facts and ask questions about social mobility, and if all our children get equal chances in life. The BBC then make programmes about social mobility, such as this one and the John Humphrey one. Does the BBC need to grow the fuck up ir does someone want to shut us up?

Heroine, terrible to hear what happened to you but this does not happen in all "working class schools".

My oldest Son left UEA with a 2-1 in Maths and economics, My other Son is at a very good university doing English Lit.

Both got 3 x A, At A level and suprise suprise, they both went to "working class" schools.

claig 'Middle class' Thatcher was married to a millionaire by the time she was in the running for top jobs on the Conservative party.

Hardly an ordinary state of affairs.

These are the top ten state schools in England and Wales, listed by A level/IB results:

Colchester Royal Grammar School, Essex
King Edward VI Grammar, Essex
The Tiffin Girls' School, Kingston upon Thames
Colyton Grammar School, Devon
Altrincham Grammar School for Girls
Invicta Grammar School, Kent
King Edward VI Camp Hill for Girls, Birmingham
Hockerill Anglo-European College, Hertfordshire (comprehensive!)
Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls
King Edward VI Five Ways, Birmingham

All of the above schools achieved better A level results than Westminster, St Pauls and Eton, so why haven't any of these schools produced a Prime Minister or even any cabinet ministers? It can't be because state schools aren't producing the results.

Maybe the fact that four of the schools are girls' schools and females are under-represented in parliament has something to do with it! :o

One of the interesting things about this discussion is that secondary schooling carries more import in the UK than any other country.

The average American will not be able to tell you what secondary school Obama went to. Likewise, the secondary school attendance of Sarkozy, Merkel and Naoto Kan will be a matter of supreme indifference to their countrymen. I suspect one would have to plough through the more boring sort of autobiography to find out where they went to school at all.

Yet here, the minutiae of the relative standings of St Paul's and Eton, and the impact these have on the governance of the country are matters of national interest.

We need to grow the fuck up.

Newwave - I think Toby Young is desperately keen for his dc's to have a state education, which meets his own high standards.

No IMHO he wanted a "sort of" private school paid for by others for him and his cronies. Who is he to impose his "standards" on others.

The left wing reaction to his efforts gives the impression that they would rather the middle classes quietly sent their dc's to independent schools, than put effort into improving the state offering.

Be better if he had put the effort into improving his local state school rather than wanting his own school in his own middle class image.

one of the problems is that competiveness amongst the middle classes is still bound by fairly ethical views and encourages performance, where competition in a working class school means keeping your peers down, especially the high performers so that you can look a bit better - this is more like most of real life, but it makes achievement in a working class school much more difficult because you have to be very strong and determined - succeeding in a place where getting things right and working hard gets you benefits is easy - as working class kids who join the army find out, suceeding in a place where every success brings hardship, exclusion, bullying and jealousy from the teachers is completely different. Some of the Westminster kids would have been beaten daily in my school and the teachers would have joined in, and blamed them for being arrogant and condescending not the bullies (I know, because I was a bright kid in a rural and working class comprehensive and had the same treatment - one teacher drove six miles to interrogate me about 'all the trouble I was causing at school' when I was on a special programme in the next town and a gang of girls had been roaming the school with the sole purpose of beating me up - the teachers, afraid themselves of working class girls, sought to blame me, rather than stand up to the bullies).

It's not daft at all. They all try to pretend they are of the people. Just like Nick Clegg did, until the papers told us of his aristocratic and banking background.

Newwave - I think Toby Young is desperately keen for his dc's to have a state education, which meets his own high standards, instead of just sitting them for a London private school (like most other upper-middle class parents).

His way, many children whose parents can't afford private fees, will benefit (and yes some who could afford private will give a state school a chance).

The left wing reaction to his efforts gives the impression that they would rather the middle classes quietly sent their dc's to independent schools, than put effort into improving the state offering.