The notion that the privately educated are pariahs of society is surely at odds with the fact that “the privately educated dominate leading professions”? I agree with Hadley Freeman (Weekend, 5 March) that “life is unfair”, but this has also been exemplified in state schools, where the elite A-streamers of the 1960s looked down on the C-streamers. Currently “top sets” are polarised from those in the “bottom sets”. Having started off in a low-achieving comprehensive, I gained a scholarship to an all-girls Catholic sixth form. Survival depended on “self-awareness”, which evidently can’t be purchased, being good at sport, getting a part in the school play, pretending to play the guitar at mass, and being evasive when asked which part of town I lived in.
Rose Kavanagh
Cambridge
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