State Schools And The Middle Classes

Both Charles Kennedy and Alex Salmond used last night's Question Time to bemoan the lack of "middle-class" engagement with English state schools. I know what they mean, of course. And in those terms, they have a point.

But where is the middle? Who is in it? Certainly not those who can find school fees in excess of the annual national median wage for full-time work. The seven per cent of children educated at such additional expense are certainly not in the "middle" of anything.

And even just using "middle-class" to mean "neither obviously aristocratic nor obviously proletarian", whom do Messrs Kennedy and Salmond think run the state school system in England? The same people as run it in Scotland, that's who.