I was a walking statistic: refugee; single-parent child; on free school meals (FSM), English as an additional language; bullied; minority ethnic group within a minority; a child subsumed in mental health problems.

You may well ask why I am telling you all of this. The reason is simple: in the last few months, I have begun to wonder if a refugee child today would be afforded the same opportunities that I was given 40 years ago. These are the opportunities that have allowed me to travel some distance from my roots, to the heady heights of the middle classes and a successful teaching career.

I arrived in the UK from South Africa, aged 5, in 1977, as a child of a refugee fleeing the apartheid government that had threatened to imprison my mother if she didn’t leave the country with immediate effect.

My first language was Zulu with twangs of Sutu and Xhosa.

To be totally transparent, I was actually born in the UK and then whisked off to the motherland at 3 - but aged 5, it felt very much like I was arriving in a foreign country.

Upon arriving back in London, we lived in a cockroach- and mice-infested single room in Hackney. I remember having a bath once a week.

It was a really big deal - we had to boil water on the hob upstairs to fill the manky bathtub in the basement.

Almost immediately, my local primary school set about teaching me the alphabet while the other children did more challenging tasks. I felt stupid, yet connections were being made in my South African-wired brain.

After much hard work from both me and my teachers, and with the support of my mum, I was reading fluently. Heavily subsidised by the Greater London Council (a big thanks to Ken Livingstone) and the much-maligned Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), I then went on a musical journey of discovery that would change the course of my life; being a FSM family, this was all for free.

When I was eight years old, my family life was thrown upside down by schizophrenia and the massive unpredictability that inevitably followed. It was an incredibly confusing and lonely time, but my violin and clarinet became my mum, dad, auntie, cousins.

The state gave me the loyal and loving family that I needed at the time.

And so I moved on to secondary school. The head of music there insisted that I audition for a Saturday music school and holiday orchestras that were run by the ILEA; my eyes were opened to a future of unending possibilities.

Grammars are no solution

Recently, education secretary Justine Greening said: “We have to recognise that actually for grammars, in terms of the disadvantaged children that they have, they really do help them close the attainment gap...and at the same time, we should recognise that parents also want choice for their children and that those schools are often very oversubscribed.”

What I was experiencing in the 1980s through music was, to borrow Justine Greening’s turn of phrase, an educational initiative that was “closing the gap” - but the most important difference was that this was open to all children, to any student with even the slightest inclination towards the subject.

Gaining a grammar school place could not be more different to my experience; it is certainly no solution to the ever-widening chasm between rich and poor. Only the very cunning parents - who are tutoring their little darlings to the hilt, with a dash of RADA, grade 8 in the euphonium and some other uniquely impressive skills - manage that.

I just don’t think families like mine, where no adult was working or had even stepped inside high school, never mind university, would have the time, energy or inclination to even consider the grammar option.

As a bullied, troubled child in my comprehensive school, the musical activities presented a chance to meet other awkward teenagers with an unusual love for the arts.

It gave me a positive focus and a place where I was stretched socially, academically, emotionally. It kept me off the crime-filled streets of Haggerston, away from the self-harm that could have so easily engulfed me. In so doing, it transformed my data of deprivation into something quite magical.

Lives can spiral without hope

With the intricate web of free activities available to me, what was referred to as the “loony left” kept me firmly inside the system to the extent that I ended up doing an A-level music course specifically aimed at those intending to embark on a music degree, as well as three other A levels, before I set off for Cambridge.

Without the free packages of hope that were handed out by my former Labour local authority - opportunities that my family could never have even imagined - I am certain I would now be at the bottom of the long downward spiral my family was on.

I meet so many children that remind me of my younger self in schools today and I fear for their future. I was that quiet child with multiple problems who just wanted to be invisible. I didn’t make trouble, so there was no evidence of my need for support. The education system now is so broken, it can only be reactive - about responding to kids who scream and smash.

There are no funds for educators to plan such inspirational experiences outside of the core curriculum - ones that could change a child’s life forever, unknowingly carrying them through the secret turmoil that so many families face. And this is even before we introduce the divisiveness of even more selection.

Hannah Sokoya is an education consultant based in London