Et tu, Brute? George Osborne’s former French teacher, who recalls the future Chancellor being “a gifted linguist”, declares that public schools are “unfair and unChristian” despite having worked in one for years.
Jonathan Smith used to teach at Colet Court, the prep school for St Paul’s Boys, where “the facilities shared by both schools, owned by the huge, wealthy Mercers’ company, are phenomenal: they lack nothing,” he writes in a letter to the Daily Mail.
By contrast, at his own school in North Yorkshire, “we had none of these features. The enormous discrepancy in advantages … was totally unfair.” Despite his rally call, he has little hope for change, as “most people who run the country, and those who make laws, were educated there, they want their children and grandchildren to enjoy the same advantages, however unfair”.
Smith admits there were some perks to working for the elite, though: “The parents were very generous. At the end of one summer term I received a case of fine wine from one father (whose son I had, wisely, made captain of cricket).” Perhaps French isn’t all George learnt from his prof.
