Are state schools actually providing a better education than private schools?

But then, over lunch last week, a friend proudly boasted she had finally made a Tatler list. Or rather her son’s school had – it was named as one of the best state primaries in the country by the magazine in this month’s edition. I turned to the magazine myself and was shocked to find that the nearest secondary school to where I live (and which oversees my children’s current primary school) had also made the aristocratic grade.

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Private tuition too may be behind some of the improvement in state school education. While squeezed middle parents may not be able to afford school fees, they are shelling out in droves for tutors.

One in four children generally, and almost half in London, now have private tuition in what the Sutton Trust has called a £6bn “escalating arms race in education” – which raises questions about how children can have a childhood if the end of each day is crammed with more learning, rather than play.

Read her full article here