Eton, as Robert Verkaik tells us, is advertising for parents to send their sons there, as long as they have "vigour, talent and industry" (Eton mess: how the school perpetuates inequality, 29/07/19). The most expensive school in the country will then give them the necessary support so that they will be "prepared for ...the country`s top universities". This is wrong on so many accounts!
Judging by the attitudes shown by the Etonian politicians we know, the school develops values which lead to selfishness, unwarranted feelings of superiority and downright snobbery, based simply on the possession of wealth. Many Etonians get into university by taking exams other than A-levels which are set and marked mostly by teachers in the private sector, and by being prepared relentlessly for rather pointless university interviews. Why Oxbridge continues with interviews, when they clearly play an important role in dissuading "ordinary" pupils, beggars belief. Why not interview them after three years of university education, rather than eighteen years of deprivation?
Until the Oxbridge colleges and other universities concentrate more on recruiting talented pupils from the underfunded state schools rather than the most expensive independent schools, which are clearly "playing" the exam system, the country`s inequalities will continue to increase!
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