Dreaming spires for all? Only if we face up to some hard truths

There’s a fundamental problem at the heart of our education system: private schools educate around 7% of students yet account for 44.6% of students at Oxford. A familiar statistic, but one that highlights the failure of too many of our state schools. Defenders of educational elitism rightly point out that top universities should take the best pupils wherever they find them. But making this point is too often a way of avoiding the real issue: that our state school system is failing to produce enough bright, confident and hard-working children.

By Jacob Reynolds | Battle of Ideas | Saturday, 5 November 2011 at 6:00 am