The top comprehensives may be able to give a child an excellent chance of an elite university place; the private schools can virtually guarantee it. All else said on the subject is waffle.

The 7 per cent of children who attend private schools take nearly half the places at Oxford and Cambridge and nearly a third of the places at other elite universities such as Durham, Manchester and Bristol.

It is crude educational apartheid and a major obstacle to the equality of opportunity that New Labour says it wants.

Peter Wilby, The Observer, 7 July 02