IT IS A natural instinct: parents aspire to secure for their children advantages in life. Generally there are two mechanisms: wealth and education. Where they meet there will always be political controversy.
Britain has always had a particular complex about expensive private schooling. For generations, alumni of a handful of institutions have been disproportionately represented in political and cultural elites.
But while applications to top private schools have stayed relatively stable in recent years, a new trend has emerged: the procurement of educational advantage in other ways.
The Observer reports today on the explosive growth of the tutoring industry, with, for example, children being primed – at huge cost to their parents – for the 11-plus exam to secure places at the few remaining state grammar schools.
This does not necessarily reflect a decline in school standards. It might express higher rates of parental competitiveness, driven by improvements in average exam results.
Of course, a free society allows parents to employ tutors for their children. Usually, that is a rational, targeted response to local weaknesses in school departments. But as a whole it contributes to a picture of Britain's education system where an under-acknowledged engine is at work: selection by wealth. That could be payment of fees to a private school or tutors. It could be paying a premium on a house in the catchment area of a desirable school. Either way, rich children get a better education than poor ones.
In recent years, policy-makers have addressed this issue by looking at school structures, their status and funding, but with only modest effect. Perhaps, then, it is time to consider the bigger picture: that the uneven distribution of educational chances is a symptom and a cause of wealth disparities. Address directly the plain fact of vast income inequality, and educational equity may follow.