Continuing in its championing of the destruction of the remaining few bastions of educational quality, the BBC reports:

Independent schools have been accused of a “complete lack of vision” in their wider social purpose, by a leading independent school head teacher.

Anthony Seldon, head of Wellington College, says the independent sector could not remain “detached from the mainstream national education system”…

…It isn’t right any longer for our schools to cream off the best pupils, the best teachers, the best facilities, the best results and the best university places.

“If you throw in the 166 state grammar schools, which are predominantly middle class and private schools in all but name, the stranglehold is almost total,” Dr Seldon told a conference held at his school.

He also rejected the idea that bursaries for poorer families could compensate for the disadvantage - as this deprives the state sector of talented pupils…

Someday professional educators might learn this; and the BBC might, too.  But then again probably not.  Children — regardless of “class” — do not belong to the state.  No child was given birth to in order later to be a student in a given school merely to serve as some educator’s social pawn, useful as deemed necessary to make that school perform better . . . and so make the life of some head teacher easier. 

And definitely not one possessed of such misplaced and stupid arrogance — and one does not say that lightly — actually to proclaim, as Dr Seldon does, that Britain’s educational system (as imperfect as it might be) . . . is equivalent to “apartheid”?: 

In flippantly misappropriating that term in order to push what he considers an educational “reform” agenda, Dr Seldon demonstrates particularly that he lacks even a solid grounding in what apartheid really was.  And that is inexcusable.  For it definitely wasn’t about John Prescott failing his 11 plus. 

Dr Seldon is head of a private school?  It’s disgraceful.  I speak here from second-hand experience, watching my brother-in-law work hard (he is not “independently” wealthy) to scrape up high fees twice yearly for my 13 year old nephew actually to get a magnificent, personal Catholic school education, rather than be dropped instead into a faceless, valueless, 3,000 student comprehensive, where he’d be little more than policed all day.  (Although that latter would, true, probably much better prepare him for real life, of course.)  Indeed, if I had a child at Dr Seldon’s school, and he had just compared me to an apartheid ”baas”, I would demand he resign immediately — and try again to get a job in the state sector, where his innovative skills are clearly badly in demand.

…Being in the same time slot is not about being the same, but to give choice…

Sorry, sorry, that’s from another story.  Or is “choice” in this life . . . just about which version of the 10 O’Clock News we get to watch?  Rather than the constant berating and stamping on parents who flee to independents for the sake of their children, fix the damn state sector . . . and many of the best will come back.  State schools are a heckuva lot cheaper, after all.