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Is there any chance that this classic model of the comprehensive can come back? She replies that what "they" have set up will fail (she doesn't say so, but I'd guess "they" means New Labour as well as the coalition government) and what she's arguing for will, 20 or 30 years hence, emerge as the only alternative. "This whole shimmer of choice," she continues, "it just confirms class hierarchies. In the early 21st century, we have something that increasingly looks like the set-up in the 19th century. The three biggest blocks to a fairer school system don't involve genuine choice. Private schools obviously, because you can't go if you can't pay. Grammar schools are positively Orwellian: the state sorts children out and says where they should go. Faith schools: well, if you're not a churchgoer, the only option is for deception."

So she would deny choice to parents? "I don't think we can any more just tell parents where to send their children. But we have to find a way to ensure that no school is stuck with the most disadvantaged. School admissions may be politically unsexy but they're absolutely crucial." All this is said with the expansive hand gestures characteristic of the family, and eyes trained slightly upwards into the middle distance, as though scanning anxiously for a vision of happy comprehensives where rich and poor learn to love and cherish each other.

Melissa Benn's book School Wars is published on 5 September by Verso Books