agreeing that the Sunday Times is talking nonsense. The posh kids are going to UnSAnian posh universities not because they (people or places) are better but because they aren't.

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what the overprivileged rich & powerful subset want is to be in an exclusive club, mixing solely with other well-to-do and well-connected people. They want all their contacts (and marriage partners) to be those which will let them continue to be overprivileged.

what they absolutely don't want is to come up against all their intellectual betters from the middle to poor sectors of society and to find out just how mediocre they themselves are. They can't cope with a true meritocracy.

only scholarship kids are truly special & meritworthy in their own right - and that's exactly why they're looked down upon by the old-fashioned version of influencers in these kleptocratic institutions.

if you’ve visited Eton? We did, when son#3 was considering a music scholarship there (they have some of the best music teachers in the country, including his previous teacher). He went for an interview and stayed in the school for a couple of days. They offer a lot of scholarships to people who can’t afford the fees.

we were among a large group of state-school pupils of all nationalities and ethnicities from all over the country who were there for interviews. The picture we got was of a search for excellence. They told us that the rich kids faced humiliation if they expected to be popular because of their poshness.

the class system is to blame more than Eton.

there didn’t seem to be any discrimination against scholarship pupils.