It is a dreadful thought to middle-class Britons who scrimp to send their children to the fee-paying schools that educate 7% of the country's children but produce around half of those with really good exam grades: their sacrifices may be not just futile, but counterproductive. Newspapers and dinner-party conversations are rife with stories of universities systematically discriminating against applicants from independent schools and running secret quotas for disadvantaged state-school applicants to meet government demands for a huge increase in poor students and a cut in the proportion that come from fee-paying schools.
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