As a young pupil of Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital school in Bristol, Chris King used to take his cap off as soon as he passed through its castle-like gates into the outside world. “God help us if somebody from another school was passing by, they’d knock it off your head,” he says.
But he is worried that discrimination against children from “elite” schools has soared to a “different level”. While a selective school-educated child from a “socially tough” part of town might once have faced snowballs or hat-grabbing from their comprehensive school peers, “now they just have stones chucked at them”.
King says he knows of recent cases of families from deprived areas turning down 100 per cent bursaries from fee-paying schools. “Before, there would be a certain pride in the local community in that child. That’s all gone.”
King has spent much of the past eight years representing independent schools on the national stage, first as chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) and, since 2018, as chief executive of the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS). Before that, he spent three decades teaching and leading selective and independent schools across England.
