Engines of Privilege
FRANCIS GREEN AND DAVID KYNASTON
(Bloomsbury, 320 PP, £20)
Tablet Bookshop price £18 • Tel 020 7799 4064

In June 2014, delivering a sermon in the chapel at King’s College, Cambridge, Alan Bennett chose to address the thorny issue of private versus state schools. Private education was, he insisted, unjust: “Those who provide it know it. Those who pay for it know it. Those who have to sacrifice in order to purchase it know it. And those who receive it know it, or should.”

There is no issue on which feelings run higher than that of Britain’s educational apartheid. We all have an emotional stake in it, based on our own education, or our children’s, or both. My own experience leaves me conflicted. Educated entirely in private schools – including one term at Eton, viewed by many as the epitome of injustice and ­privilege – I have sent my children to state schools from nursery through to sixth form. They’ve thrived, both academically and socially – they mix with people from all backgrounds with an ease I never had. But I can’t claim any moral high ground. Had we had enough money when they were small, we’d probably have gone private. Meantime, living in west London, we are surrounded by some of the best Catholic state schools in the ­country; and if ever the teaching is not up to scratch, we’ve been able to afford tutoring. So we’ve had our cake and eaten it, and I came to Engines of Privilege completely uncertain of my views.

Francis Green and David Kynaston (both privately-educated Oxford alumni) have two premises: that the private sector limits the life chances of those who attend state schools; and that it is time for a full national debate on the private/state issue. Their tone is calm and evidence-based, not agitprop.

They begin by demolishing the argument that education is just another thing money can buy – like skiing holidays or smart cars. Education is different, they say, because “its effects are deep, long-term and run from one generation to the next”. They flesh this out convincingly. The 6 per cent of children ­privately educated have vastly more money spent on them per head than those in state schools (the fees at top public schools are now over £40,000 per annum; the budget for a child at state secondary school is around £3,500).