“Ten leading universities show bias to state pupils,” shouts the Daily Telegraph. The Sunday Times thinks that privately-educated “Oxbridge hopefuls” are moving to state schools for their A-levels, in an attempt to circumvent said bias. “Sorry,” Philip Hensher opines robustly in the Independent, “but Oxbridge graduates are best.” Margaret Hodge set off the latest furore, by asking universities to give special consideration to working-class students, even if they have lower A-level grades. “Social engineering,” spluttered the public school headmasters. Myself, I’ve never quite grasped why social engineering is always considered such a bad thing by the privileged classes - since it’s what they excel at. All that fee-paying and tutoring and entrance examining and competitive ballet - isn’t that a way of making sure that one particular group of people stays on top?

Back in the 1970s, when I was a young mother and short of cash, I signed on with a tutorial agency and gave grinds at the kitchen table to teenagers who were in danger of failing (or had failed) their English O-level. I had a little string of them, who all passed, giving me much satisfaction. Some were charming and indolent, others were struggling, pushed along by ambitious parents. And all of them were already at fee-paying schools - which certainly weren’t earning their fees.

Educational achievement is so tied up with social and financial status that it seems like we can’t think straight. One recent Sunday Times piece concluded: “Once private tutoring reaches a critical mass, everyone feels they have to have it.” Excuse me, but who is this “everyone?” Is the experience of a few metropolitan parents true of the whole of Britain? London has always been a special case because the poorest areas have, not surprisingly, some of the most depressing schools you’ll ever see, and well-off London families are the most competitive and socially-anxious in the country. As a result, middle-class flight to the private sector is widespread in London. But not, I must emphasise, universal.

There are thousands of middle-class children in London comprehensive schools, who are doing fine (and not only in the elite schools, either). Yet many articles in London-based newspapers - themselves largely staffed by ambitious competitive people who are anxious for their children’s future - come close to suggesting that to be state-educated is to be working-class. Hmm - 93 per cent of the population? That makes Tony Blair’s fatuous claim that we’re all middle class now look even weirder.

A bit of clear thinking is required. Of course A-level grades are not the only way of judging “merit,” when it comes to university entrance. There is a strong argument for giving clever working-class children from under-performing schools the breaks which will make all the difference to their lives. But policies designed to improve the lot of the poorest don’t always work out that way. I wouldn’t mind betting that top universities will be accepting far more articulate state-educated middle-class children with rather disappointing grades than they ever did in the past. It’ll certainly make the universities’ figures look better when they submit them to Margaret Hodge.