State School Alumni Should Take Pride in Their Educational Background
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rhiannon-lucy-cosslett. "To state school alumni starting university, I say this: be proud of your background | Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett | The Guardian." October 5, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that students from state schools starting university should feel proud of their background instead of intimidated by privately-educated peers who often act superior. She says state schools build better social skills and character, while private schools can breed a harmful sense of entitlement, so state-school students have nothing to be ashamed of and much to be proud of.
Conclusion
State-school-educated university freshers should hold their heads high and be proud of their background, rather than feeling inferior to privately-educated peers.
Premises
- State schools are wrongly framed by media (especially right-wing media) as dystopian or something to overcome, when they actually represent British excellence, innovation and creativity.
- 93% of UK-educated people attended state school, and many of Britain's most celebrated figures (Attenborough, Wilson, Ennis-Hill, Rashford) are state-school alumni.
- Private schools foster a sense of superiority in students, which has contributed to problematic behavior among some leading politicians and cultures of abuse in boarding schools that prioritized reputation over safety.
- State schools, being more socially mixed, teach valuable life skills like openness, confidence, humor born of inclusion, and more developmentally appropriate understanding of the opposite sex.
- Privately-educated students chose (via their parents) to purchase an advantage, which does not make them inherently better than those who did not have that advantage.
- State-educated students who reach university have done so largely through their own merit, without the financial head start of private tuition.
- Personal and reported experience (the author's own university experience, and recent reports of classism at St Andrews) demonstrate ongoing classist attitudes that make state-school students feel 'less than,' which is unwarranted.
Assumptions
- Pride in one's educational background is an appropriate and effective response to classist treatment.
- The social and character benefits attributed to state schooling (confidence, humor, social skills) are generally true and consistent across diverse state schools.
- The behavior of 'some' privately-educated politicians and abuse cases at 'some' boarding schools can be reasonably generalized to reflect on private education broadly.
- Choosing private education is equivalent to a form of harmful segregation rather than a legitimate educational choice.
- The reader shares or can be persuaded to share the author's value judgment that state education is morally and socially superior, not merely statistically more common.
- Anecdotal and self-reported experiences are sufficient evidence for broad claims about national culture and institutional behavior.