School daze

I don't get paid to write this blog, and it's meant to be a personal record, so I don't tend to take the writing process too seriously. But this weekend I went back to my old boarding school for a fifteen year reunion, and I have lots to say. I want to write about it well. But I am so dead with exhaustion, I don't know how it will come out. I'll start it now, and if I have to abandon ship half way through, I apologise. It's possibly not the writing technique Charlie Brooker would use, but then I'm not Charlie Brooker and this isn't a weekly column for a national newspaper. As far as I'm aware.

I sent the first email about the reunion last August, to the school, to see what they thought about a group of us coming to spend a night there sometime in 2010. Eight months and hundreds of communiques later, 30 old girls and a clutch of older teachers returned to our even older school, drank tea and then, once the teachers had left, had a tour and a lot of good food and wine, and not enough sleep. The school buildings have changed a fair bit, but everything is basically the same in all the good ways, just a bit more modern: totally recognisable to me, and still familiar.

But what was personally surprising was how little emotion I felt. I had the very potent sense of being a completely different person to the girl I was at school - not just the expected progression of feeling older and wiser, but absolutely and unbreachably separate from that other Jane, a distant relative with whom I have no desire to be friends or penpals. My school days were immensely happy in part and I made some friends for life, of that there is no doubt. But I was also miserable at times, like any child, and there is much of that period that I have happily left behind forever; it's not locked away or festering in a pit of denial, it's just... it's gone and I grieve it not. I am infinitely happier now than I ever was in my teens - even at my most miserable these days, I am markedly better off - and I think I enjoyed the reunion as a fun gathering of people whose company I enjoy in the present, rather than an opportunity to nostalge about the past.

The other oddity was seeing the school as part of a group of parents. Of the 30 of us there on Saturday, many are now mothers, and the conversation inevitably turned to whether we plan to educate our children privately or not. In helping us to organise the reunion, the school is, I'm sure, hoping that several of our number choose to send their daughters there in a few years, but even if the desire is genuine, the reality may make it impossible for all but the wealthiest. With fees now around £28k per annum, plus extras, this means that, for every girl they send to the school, a parent needs to be earning around £55k before tax. If you have, say, two kids at private boarding schools with no scholarships, that's around £110k per year on school fees alone - no mortgage, no holidays, no debt repayment, no theatre tickets. I just cannot imagine ever being able to afford that - but many people I know will find the money somehow.

Fortunately for my bank balance, I still don't see myself sending my fictional child to private school. Of course, my opinions will all change the moment I give birth, but right now, I still have a problem with it. Looking round the school over the weekend, I was shocked at the difference in experiences a girl would have there vs. a state-run comprehensive. The facilities are exceptional - a vast fitness centre with a dance studio, a massive theatre and drama department, an incredible music block with an inspirational young head at the helm, and some of the best academic records in the country. Going to that school for seven years would be amazing. But... it's an amazing bubble. As longtime LLFF readers will know, I left school without any grasp of general knowledge. I'd been spoonfed to get top grades in my exams - but I couldn't have told you what communism was, nor defined the major differences between the political parties. I knew a bit about WWII, but nothing about WWI. I knew something about Shakespeare, but I wouldn't have been able to tell you who was on the throne at the time he was writing. My knowledge was a collection of essays, pre-written in my head. The only stuff outside those topics was Take That and outrage that my friend's brother appeared to find my pale skin, under-developed facial features and deep-seated insecurities eminently resistable.

I left school aged 17 with three good A levels and the unearned social self-confidence that is both part of the appeal and one of the biggest flaws of private education. Would I have been happier if I'd gone to a local state school? Who can say. Given that I have depression and believe that I definitely was a sufferer while I was at school, the chances are I would have found those years a struggle anywhere. As it was, I got good results, developed a lifelong love of choral singing which I'd hate to have missed out on, and made fantastic friends. I consider myself lucky to have gone there. But god it was a bubble. I was a naive dickhead when I left - I knew jack shit about the real world and, fifteen years later, I still feel like I'm playing a game of catch-up. Do I really want to spend £55k p.a. (plus at least 15 years' inflation) to turn my kids into naive dickheads with great A level results?

More than just a debate about my own kids elect, there's the bigger discussion about the UK and humanity. On a broad political level, I believe passionately in equality of opportunity - and there's no doubt that the continued existence of private school is about as much of a two fingers up at fairness as you can get. These days I rarely feel as though I am in an environment where the majority of people are ridiculously wealthy and privileged, so Saturday was an odd sensation for me, as we all chatted and laughed while being served canapes and glasses of sparkling wine by a wonderful team of caterers who live in the local town. I was deeply uncomfortable with a strong sense of them and us - not that we're bad people and not that they hated us, but just that it's not FAIR and, although I know life isn't fair, surely we should all do our bit not to perpetuate systems with which we wholeheartedly disagree?

If I were Prime Minister, it would be my number one priority to bring state school standards up to those of the private ones, with the explicit and stated intention of closing down all private schools within a certain number of years. But that's a fantasy - the reality is that state schools are very hit and miss, some excellent, some rubbish, and depending on where you live, the options can be free and great or terrifyingly bad. Until state education is a lot better, I wouldn't want to deny wealthy parents the opportunity of paying for private. But I'd like to get to a point where the richest don't have the need nor the desire to segregate their own from the hoi polloi, where we can all happily grow up together as equals, free from this apartheid that still feeds the old British class divides. What sounds like utopia to me probably sounds like a nightmare to others, but that's what I was thinking about on the journey back to London yesterday. And it's SO lucky that I have my opinions on this all sorted out, given that I am unattached and about as likely to get pregnant as my own mother. PHEW.