Yes, schools are divided along class lines - I've lived it | Martin Dunne

My experience as a student at the end of the sixth leads me to agree with the head teachers' union that schools lack diversity

schools are divided along class lines and not diverse enough to offer students the opportunity to learn skills intangible "life of aspiration, effort and persistence the other, "according to Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.

As a student at the end of sixth grade, I think he's right.

Back in elementary school, I was a member of a tribe of young new faces and hair in the wind fairly interchangeable. Some children pronounce the T a little harder, or wore skirts a little shorter, but very few of us think about our differences in social status. Instead cultural confusions were ignored, questions like "Why do not you watch TV in the family?" And "Why not eat pork?" Were treated to obtain simple answers such as "My father said that the books are better for the brain "and" Indian family ", which were readily accepted.

For me it is only when we moved in high school that I realized my position in the social hierarchy. For the first time we children were in search of employment on Saturday and towers of paper, spending and saving our own income and, especially, who wanted to be as individuals.

But of course everyone wants to be the guy who comes in. So, after developing a greater sense of the world around us, as the first year, we looked for companions unconsciously or not, had looked at similar or shared experiences, the basic appearance of musical tastes and interests. Prove that even when children are dressed in school uniform to promote equality, if they want to meet someone else in the background, it will eventually.

• As adolescence brings with it a greater understanding of our own economic situation, we focus on the world too - rebellious students make jokes about what teachers were underpaid, rate success and Percentages are exercised within the corridor walls, the distinctions were quickly established between the "chavs" and "have nots" chav. For the first time we realized that - almost a fifth of students -. Were allocated free school meals
• remember a child whose parents have "had money". He was kind, calm and excelled in all subjects. Outside of school he was a successful athlete and dedicated student, spending hours reviewing every night. It was left high school with nearly straight A * s, despite our average step rate of 40%. One of the driving forces behind its success is that his parents, who encouraged or forced, perhaps in her. But later admit in private, during his years in the same sixth success, his parents had paid for the extra tuition at home.

Most people like to believe that they belong to a kind of "gang" or "clique" at school. Although I am under no illusion that could as easily gel with long hair, middle-class fans that Green Day-striped shirt, hip hop, have certainly not a "gang" of friends. Not initially, at least.

spent my first year as a class nerd. My job was at the time, my shoes shined and I carried my books in a carrying case with zipper (I am grateful that The Inbetweeners is not the first issue until 2008, because it would immediately been compared to Will, the series "briefcase wanker"). It was not long, however, before I was frustrated by the lack of benefits that are intelligent seemed to have.

So he did what many young people come in my teens to mid-life crisis. I started wearing clothes and sovereign borrowing my father's ring. I wore baseball caps and continuously pumped hip-hop beats strong directly into my eardrum. To be incorporated in the jargon of my speech whenever possible, being careful not to push too far - anything to fit better with my friends
Meanwhile, the gentle, quiet, had distanced noisy fellow, sitting in front of all classes and occasionally look up to ask someone to return to their sovereign. But it was not what I wanted.