Being hypocritical is an accusation slung at everyone from time to time, but politicians face it more than most.
And the topic of where parents - political families particularly - choose to send their offspring to school ignites people's wrath like no other.
The Tory party's George Osbourne took flak earlier this month for opting to send his children to the local preparatory school he attended.
Does it matter? Are parents who get their children christened just so they can attend "good" Church of England schools, for instance, shameful or doing what any reasonable person would for the best chances of their own?
Faith schools and academies - the publicly funded "independent" schools the government has pushed since 2000 - have both drawn widespread public criticism. So perhaps it's parents' dirty little (educational) secret that they are desperate to get their kids into the controversial schools.
Because they are trying, in droves it would appear.
In this week's education supplement Fiona Millar questioned whether academies really are as oversubscribed as we're led to believe.
She berated the schools, saying their faster-than-average improvement couldn't be compared with other previously poorly performing schools because they are better funded. And they cream off the best pupils.
However, according to Sir Michael Wilshaw, principal of Mossbourne academy and education director at ARK - the educational charity set up in 2004 to create academies in challenging inner-city areas - academies' day-to-day funding is the same or similar to that of state schools.
But he argues that academies are massively oversubscribed, in London anyway. Mossbourne, based in Hackney, gets 1,400 applications for each place going.
While the average ratio of pupils applying for academy places is rather more modest - three to one - the fact remains that academies may be railed against publicly, but parents want to send their children to them. Would you?
