ABC of equality in education

"HAVING your prospects determined at birth is the most pernicious and fundamental form of inequality."

"HAVING your prospects determined at birth is the most pernicious and fundamental form of inequality."

That damning judgment was copied into my journal several years ago as a blazing reminder why I needed to find my way home. It was the Spectator magazine's grim conclusion in terms of education in Britain. The politics of envy has sourly infected that land, and nowhere is it more apparent than the teaching of young people. Despair was all around us, from parents who knew that a first-class education is the greatest gift they can give their kids - and more often than not in this new England they'd have to pay for it. Hugely. And many, simply, couldn't. Broken Britain indeed.

The ugly truth dawned at preschool level over there: that richer, thicker kids would end up getting further ahead than brighter, poorer kids. Whether we could afford private education or not I didn't want my children growing up in that world; I wanted the bracing rigour of a meritocracy. Our local, hugely expensive nursery in London was a feeder school for Prince William's old pre-prep, itself a conveyer belt into feeders for the likes of Eton and Westminster, which of course are well-worn paths to Oxbridge. So. The shaping of the British elite - and by the same measure, its underclass - begins at three, and with the demise of the UK's selective, government-funded grammar schools from the '60s onwards it wasn't looking good for children without access to that golden path. UK politicians come from an increasingly narrow pool - the PM, his deputy and chancellor all went to schools with fees higher than the average wage; they're all Oxbridge graduates, as is the Leader of the Opposition. And they wonder why there were riots.

Then we arrived in Oz. Before the car situation was worked out we were using cabs a lot. One thing the drivers said again and again - whether from Afghanistan or Albania or Algeria - was that you could be anything in Australia, do anything, if you worked hard enough. And for a lot of them that was a beacon, not so much for themselves but for their children. It's the great Australian dream, and as someone newly arrived in the land it felt exhilarating. Felt like the future. Intensely exciting for my children to be a part of. As a British friend residing in Australia said, "Here, no one can box you into a corner unless you want to be boxed into a corner. That's just not the case in the UK."

We came from a Britain where more than a million young people are unemployed. As I farewelled a cherished educator he said, "You're doing the right thing. The future is China and Southeast Asia. There'll be so many opportunities for your kids as they grow up."

Britain's coalition government is admirably trying to turn the stricken ship around, helmed by its reformist education minister Michael Gove. He's cleared the path for "free schools", government-funded but often parent- or teacher-led, removed from the stifling control of local councils. Writer Toby Young set up one. His moving aim: "To take a black kid from a local housing estate, feed him on a diet of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Austen and Dickens, get him into Oxford and then sit back and watch as he goes on to become Prime Minister."

Meanwhile in Australia, there's the robust tradition of state selectives. According to one survey, NSW's top 10 schools last year, in terms of HSC results, were all state selectives except for one. Imagine them being shut down as ostentatiously divisive? That's what a British Labour government decided in the '60s, and the Tories never reversed that decision. The consequences are there to see now. My kids were a part of that world and frankly, I'm so grateful we're here. A country where a fair whack of its top schools are state? As a nation, that's something to be proud of.