I WAS delighted to read that Miss Jane Panton (headmistress of Bolton School Girls' Division) has hit back at Gordon Brown's "appalling misrepresentation" of the subject of universities favouring students from private schools. Could anyone but Mr Brown be so myopic as to believe that such a thing would happen in our oh-so-egalitarian nation, where the politically-correct liberalist-left have infiltrated and now control every major institution -- the Church, media, health service and, most of all, the education system (which is precisely why our society is in the mess it is in)? The opposite is far likelier to be the case, where a child is awarded a place at a top university because she went to a state school or speaks with a working class accent.

However, I would take exception with Miss Panton's feeling she must defend the school from charges of 'elitism'; by so doing, she implicitly suggests that the term refers to something utterly obnoxious and abhorrent.

The term was never intended to be used in a perjorative sense, 'elite' being simply a derivative of the word 'elect', and its meaning is little different from that noun, signifying those who are chosen because of special aptitudes or qualities. The negative connotations which the word 'elitism' now evokes is the work of the PC mob who have completely altered its original meaning.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'elite' as "the choice part or flower (of society, or of anybody or class of persons); the cream; the best". And what is the wrong with that? What is implied is not a priggish and undeserved privilege awarded to those who come from the 'right' class. As Miss Panton makes clear, many of the pupils at Bolton School speak with Lancashire accents and come from 'ordinary' backgrounds. But they are all very bright, intellectually capable and highly motivated, and that is why they are there. They got to the school on merit after passing a very difficult examination and interview, and they remain there because their parents have, in most cases, earned the right to be able to afford to send them by their similar intellect and consequent pecuniary rewards.

Practically everything in life involves some sort of 'elitism' or 'election' .

Bolton School Parent

(name and address supplied) than another because that one is more deserving. That the politically correct fraternity, (who would prefer almost anything rather than have to face up the fact that their beloved concept of sameness just will not work in reality), know this, is one reason for their vituperative antagonism and vitriolic hostility towards excellence.

But unless we are to start choosing our politicians or doctors or lawyers by some sort of lottery, then elitism is here to stay. And unless we are prepared to have all our children turn out as the neat little sausages which the Left try to produce by their determined efforts to put the fillet steak and grissly shin beef through the same educational mincing machines (called comprehensives), then private schools are here to stay.

For as George Orwell wisely reminds us -- "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."