Birbalsingh is hated because she notices hypocrisies and points them out. The fact that our profit-driven exam boards compete with each other for schools' business by making their exams easier. The way well-behaved primary school children turn into unteachable monsters as they gradually discover that "while school says that X behaviour will result in one losing one's place at the school, in reality, rarely, if ever, does a child get permanently excluded."  

This book arrives just as Oxford and Cambridge are being pressed to allow more state school students in, as though it were the universities' fault that schools such as Ordinary are rewarded for indifferent GCSE grades, but never for setting aside a budget for an Oxbridge entrance class. A mere 7 per cent of British children are at private schools (where such classes are standard) but if you look around the City, the medical schools, the Law Courts or Parliament, you would never know it. Social mobility has stagnated in this country, and the stagnation began with the rise of the neighbourhood comprehensive.

If people like Millar, Gilbert and "Aladin" can't get their heads round the value of fiction in politics and debate, then we have only their English teachers to blame.