I have to be honest: when someone told me about that the University of Edinburgh had last year only admitted young Scots from deprived areas or from underperforming schools to nine courses, including English, history and law, I thought they were kidding, that they had misunderstood something.
Then it turned out that it was true, and my feeling of puzzlement turned to anger and incredulity. How this possibly be? To explain why I’m so bothered, a bit of personal stuff: both my parents came from working-class Central Belt backgrounds. Both my grandfathers were coal miners, one of them married to a domestic servant. Both my parents left school when they were 15. When I was five, I joined my brother in a private school.
Now, the fees, when I started school, were £70 a year; I’m not pretending that wasn’t a struggle for my parents (no car, no holidays etc) but it was their choice for whatever reason. What they wanted, above all, was for my brother and me to do well and go to university, which indeed we did, being the first people in our family to do so.
