MORE parents fear they can’t afford private schools, according to a story doing the rounds this week. One website even warned: “Holidays are cancelled and second homes sold to pay fees…”

Now where is Bob Geldof when you need him? These people are sacrificing their holidays and their second homes. Tins need to be rattled, consciences pricked… Oh, hang on a minute, no they don’t. Private education is mostly a luxury affordable only to the wealthy. And every time this column says such things, someone will point out that sacrifices are made and complain that I don’t know what I am talking about.

Strictly speaking, this is true. My hands-on experience is frankly non-existent. I have always had a problem with private education. This little difficulty is both ideological and practical.

Here’s the unwavering bit: private education is basically unfair, because those with the means pay for a more exclusive education, and their offspring are thus given an advantageous start in life (or so the envy-inducing theory goes).

With three children, school fees would have been enormous, so my stubborn philosophy remains unchallenged.

But what if financial circumstances had been different? It is possible prejudices would have been swallowed and fees paid (although any mention of this to our 17-year-old, the only one still at school, produces a violent reaction against the very notion; so it’s just as well we have always been broke and she has been spared being turned into a posh girl).

Maybe that makes me as much of a hypocrite as the fee-paying person. Better-funded friends have used private education. Yet others who could have afforded the fees chose to trust in state education – and their children have done brilliantly.

This is the best news of all, and every time children from state schools do well, we should raise a cheer. Not all do well and, yes, there are problems; but they won’t be solved by looking at private schools.

The biggest problem with private education, as this querulous heckler sees it, is that the independent sector is more or less an irrelevance. As nearly all children are educated in state schools of some description or other, we should stop worrying about private schools.

The website mentioned higher up in this rant belonged to a pressure group called Parents Outloud.

A spokesperson, Margaret Morrissey, was quoted in one of the inky sheets saying that those who educate their children privately “should receive the amount of money a child would cost in state education in terms of a voucher”.

No, Margaret, they shouldn’t. If times are tough, they should use state schools like the rest of us.

A Google search reveals that Margaret has been in the instant opinion business for a while. So her organisation is perhaps akin to York’s own Campaign For Real Education, whose website lists it as a non-political organisation formed by 14 parents and teachers in 1987.

All those people and yet the only one you ever hear from is Nick Seaton, who is down as the secretary.

In common with Parents Outloud, Mr Seaton is ready with a quick quote. Busy newspapers like nothing better than someone who will do half the job for them, so that is why the likes of these two organisations, and the all-powerful Mumsnet, are given prominence.

One of the nationals pressing the panic button on this matter was the Daily Mail, whose report quoted a word-for-word chunk from the Parents Outloud website. The paper’s reporter also wrote that “this will pile more pressure on parents who also face the prospect of rocketing university fees – which could be as high as £9,000 a year from next September”.

This isn’t quite right, as it is the students who pay the fees, via loans, and not the parents. The morality of saddling our children with enormous debts is something else altogether, but in this case the facts appear to have been twisted to fit the shape of the story.

Which is very naughty and not the sort of thing you would ever find in this column.