This piece points out how private schools and inequality in education have always been a matter of debate in UK, but historically without enough political will to address it. Following some recent scrutiny and proposed tax changes for school fees, the authors call for lasting reform.
The inconvenient truth, though, is that there existed at the time, in what was still a predominantly working-class society, precious little popular enthusiasm to tackle the issue. Almost all the evidence we have about postwar Britain is that, until at least the 1960s, the prevailing parental emotions about education were apathy and fatalism. For most people public schools existed on an entirely separate, barely recognised planet.
For decades, there had been a kind of embarrassed silence surrounding the whole issue of our quaintly named “public schools”, with their defenders largely adopting a low profile and much of the liberal left preferring to look the other way. So what was going on? Why did the private schools and their supporters at last put their heads above the parapet?