Verkaik’s larger theme is the toxification of British public life by the private school system and the injustice and inequality that educational apartheid based on wealth entails. But the blatant theft of public resources is the book’s sharpest point. From the very beginning the institutions – including St Paul’s, Winchester and Eton – have been hijacked by the wealthy, though they were plainly set up to benefit the poor. [...]
Verkaik’s solution is “slow and peaceful euthanasia”. He would suffocate the schools. Since they cater to just 7% of the population, let quotas be set, so that from their ranks come just 7% of judges (instead of 74%), 7% of senior forces officers (instead of 71%) and so on. Newspapers such as this (the British media is 50% private school-educated) will have to take the same medicine.
My money says private schools will survive: since the second world war successive governments have failed to curtail them in any significant way. As it happens, the departure of Boris Johnson means a Conservative cabinet without a son of Eton for the first time since the 1830s. But that won’t go on long – there are 20 Old Etonian MPs, all Tories. As an Eton school song has it: “Floreat Etona, Floreat, Florebit”. May Eton flourish; she will flourish.
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