Michael Gove's wife has attacked the “snobbery” of private schools, claiming parents who choose them do not want their sons and daughters to mix with ordinary children.
Sarah Vine made the comments after the Education Secretary revealed their daughter Beatrice will go to a top London state secondary — the Grey Coat Hospital School, Westminster.
Ms Vine accused parents who pick fee-paying schools of “paying for their child to mix with the right kind of kids”. And she claimed boarding produced teenagers who were “so cossetted they could barely open a tin of beans” when they went to university.
By sending Beatrice to the Church of England comprehensive, grammar school boy Mr Gove has made history as the first Conservative Education Secretary to send one of his children to a state secondary.
David Cameron has also said he will education his children in the state sector, but Chancellor George Osborne sent his children to the private prep school he attended as a boy.
Journalist Ms Vine said they wanted to give Beatrice the “broader” education of a comprehensive intake, with children from all backgrounds.
“The private sector is built on very different principles,” she wrote in her Daily Mail column. “Its agenda is a fundamentally selective one, based not only on ability to pay, but also on pupil potential. And it is also, let’s face it, about snobbery. Of course the parents of private school children are paying for the best teachers and facilities.
“But let’s be honest: they’re also paying for their child to mix with the right kind of kids.”
Ms Vine admitted she briefly attended a fee-paying boarding school in Sussex. “Due to a misunderstanding involving a night-club in Piccadilly, a 4am trip on the milk train from Victoria and the theft of some Penguin biscuits, that association was swiftly and ingloriously terminated,” she said. She said some of the state schools she attended afterwards were “scary” and “blood-curdling”, but they made her realise “that kids studying to be hairdressers deserve as much respect as those wanting to be rocket scientists”.
The head of the Association of School and College Leaders, Brian Lightman, said: “We congratulate the secretary of state and his family on their choice. This is a further sign that our state schools are in excellent health.”
