Alan Bennett: abolish public schools

The award-winning playwright Alan Bennett has called for the abolition of public schools. The writer, whose West End play The History Boys tells the story of a group of Yorkshire grammar school boys trying to get into Oxford and Cambridge, said, "I think quite plainly the public school should be abolished. How they will be abolished I don't know, without enormous disruption. But the English are so hypocritical about it."

Grammar school-educated Bennett says his first experience of public school boys came when he went to take an entrance exam at Sidney Sussex College at Cambridge in 1951. He was struck by their confidence in comparison to the timid grammar school boys. "They hogged the bread and slurped the soup - things were very much still rationed in those days. They were just louts, but I also realised that they had been better taught than I had. I thought that was unfair when I was 17, and that view has never changed."

Bennett's comments come as arguments continue over the charitable status of public schools - which critics say amounts to a state subsidy for rich fee-paying parents. The Independent Schools Council rejected his stance, saying, "The strength of the schools in the independent sector is that we educate all levels and abilities very effectively. It is a human right for parents to educate their children free of the control of the state and we are defending that right." ·