Exploring Privilege and Power: Posh Boys by Robert Verkaik is a thought-provoking book. I'm not 100% sure much will be done in the near future but a likely Labour election victory brings proposals in about abolishing charitable status, VAT on school fees etc. HMC and other bodies already have their papers drawn up and arguments at the ready. Many commentators refute Labour's ability to get this done. Meanwhile, one problem the book only glances at is the issue that many independent schools have nothing like the wealth of your Etons.
The real interest of this book is that it provides an insight into the type of people who end up running our country and the rather exclusive “chumocracy” that allowed essentially a rather dim David Cameron to rise to the top of the Conservative party. Depressingly, the book also points out the many attempts over time to level the playing field and examines the failure of these initiatives (mostly because of the meddling of the elite who send their kids to these institutions in the first place).
For many people in our country, access to a ‘public’ school is minimal and it is surprising to find that only 1% of private school students have a free place, making a bit of a mockery of the idea of charitable status in the first place. Vekaik suggests strongly that the appeal of private education isn’t actually the education itself as there is little difference in the quality of teaching between private and state school but instead it is the social networks and social mobility that these school have always promoted (at the expense of talented students from less well-off backgrounds).
The sting comes in the context: public schools were founded with the purpose to educate the poor in local parishes but were soon (as ever) taken over by wealth and then became pathways into the best universities and jobs. It asks a lot of questions about Britain and its rather servile notion that wealthy people deserve their wealth. I would definitely recommend this non-fiction book.