Private schools must be abolished – and the sooner the better

Social mobility in the UK has ground to a standstill. Money still buys a better education and more opportunities

Tails you win: Eton schoolboys in their traditional uniform (Bell/Shutterstock)

Sexual, religious and racial equality has been fought for and enshrined in law, but somewhere along the way to a caring, considerate modern society we forgot the single most important right – the unassailable entitlement to equality in education.

Social mobility in the UK has ground to a standstill. The number of working class kids going to top universities might have risen fractionally, but the real scandal is that money still buys a better education and more opportunities.

Private schools must be abolished and the sooner the better. If that’s too radical to contemplate, we could go down the route chosen by Finland, and phase them out over a decade, but they can’t be allowed to continue to promote social inequality, to give the lucky few an inbuilt advantage in life. Call it class war if you like, but there can be no justification in 2019 for allowing children from better-off homes to dominate every aspect of British society.