Published: 22 August 2009

*UK perspective article

There is nothing more pernicious than the educational divide in this country.

Series: Lucy Mangan's weekend column

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Lucy Mangan: Divide and rule begins at school

There is nothing more pernicious than the educational divide in this country.

I went to a secondary school where the pupils never had a book each. All the years we were there, we shared one between two or three. Sometimes I take this fact out, place it carefully on the ground and stare at it in disbelief. I used to look for the positive. Ah, the 80s! Ra-ra skirts, neon make-up and a marked lack of public funds everywhere. It gave the family - my mother in the NHS, my dad in teaching, me and my sister in state education - so much to bond over.

This has always been my trouble, I think. I am too slow to anger. I should have become immediately and vociferously politicised the moment I realised that reading Animal Farm from a 60-degree angle (only the one in the middle got to sit upright) was an optimal approach solely to developing scoliosis, rather than an interest in literature.

Instead, as I try to negotiate my way through the rocky territory of life, it has taken fully 20 years of watching unsuspected chasms of ignorance yawn open beneath my feet to make me fully appreciate just how much we were bilked.

The heavy work of raising my flabby consciousness receives the occasional boost, of course, by news such as the Independent Schools Council's threat to take legal action against the Charities Commission for suggesting (that's "suggesting", not "stating what has since their inception been blindingly obvious but traditionally ignored") that some (again, that's "some", as opposed to "blindingly obviously, all") independent schools don't pass the public benefit test and - drum roll from young Fotherington-Thomas, who has been taking extra lessons in the specially-soundproofed music room in the west tower at 50 quid a pop on top of his £10,000-a-term fees - shouldn't really be classed as charities at all. I know. I know. You don't say.

Full Story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/