Fury, envy and tribal loyalty are among some of the milder emotions that independent fee-paying schools arouse in the British psyche. For a lucky 7% of children they provide a good education for ￡7,000 ($11,500) a year or more. Critics call it educational apartheid: pampered treatment for a few, with selfish middle-class parents keeping the ablest kids and best teachers from the schools attended by the many. But the independent schools' supporters, notably Oliver Letwin, the home-affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, are in the news too. Himself educated at Eton, the country's best known fee-paying school, Mr Letwin said he would "go out on the streets and beg" rather than send his twins to his local state school in London. That echoes the feelings of many middle-class parents in big cities. They do not see comprehensive schools as bracingly educative introductions to the real world, but ghastly, rough places where their nice, studious children will be distracted and bullied.
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