Rosamund Irwin: Choice between private and state schools is getting more blurred

I suppose I should feel “school-shamed”. Yesterday, as I read how Britain was failing at social mobility, I knew full well that I’m deemed  to be part of the problem. A report from the Sutton Trust found that despite state schools educating 93 per cent of the population, that translates into just one in three senior doctors, a quarter of the senior judiciary and less than half of top news journalists. Access to the elite jobs, it argued, has scarcely shifted in a generation.

I don’t qualify as a member of that elite but I am part of the “jammy” seven per cent. I attended two private schools, including the same one that Tony Benn eventually had scrubbed off his Who’s Who entry (Westminster).

This could be where I blame my parents. After all, I wasn’t the one who chose my education. But that would smack of ingratitude: my parents made huge sacrifices to send me to those schools. I could highlight too how dire my local schools were and how dramatically they’ve improved: as a teenager, I remember reading — probably in the Standard — that Southwark, where I grew up, was at the bottom of some league. I’m not sure I’d be writing this were it not for my parents’ decision.