“Middle class children have better genes”

A while back I wrote this about “Blair’s Meritocracy”:

Dig down a bit, however, and I suspect you’ll find yourself harbouring a slightly less savoury view. It’s not just that we middle classes are the fortunate beneficiaries of better life-chances and a better education. Yes, there may be one or two bright people living on that council estate, but generally speaking, we’re a breed apart, aren’t we? Something akin to natural selection has divided society roughly along class lines into the more and less able. That’s what many right-wingers believe, though they generally admit it only to each other. And it is, I suspect, what the rest of us broadsheet readers believe too, if we’re honest with ourselves. Go on. Tell the truth. Isn’t that what you really think?

Today I discover it’s what Blair’s old school inspector Chris Woodhead really thinks:

Middle-class children ‘have better genes’, says Chris Woodhead
Children from middle-class families do well at school because they have “better genes”, according to Chris Woodhead, the former head of Ofsted.