Americans really pay a bribe for a good education? In Britain, we’ve got far subtler ways

The deviousness that some routinely resort to here puts the US scandal in the shade writes Catherine Bennett in The Guardian

‘Emily Thornberry hoovered up three precious places at an outstanding part-selective school.’ Photograph: George Cracknell Wright/Rex/Shutterstock


“Dude, dude, what do you think, I’m a moron?” Thus, one of the parents accused of involvement in the US college bribery racket. He’d been warned – by a wiretapped conspirator – not to reveal that he paid $50,000 for his daughter’s fraudulent test results, part of a system the fixer calls “the side door”.

Appropriately soothed – “I’m not saying you’re a moron” – the accused father is recorded, by the FBI, assuring the scam’s organiser that he’ll deliver, if required, the agreed fiction. “I’m going to say that I’ve been inspired how you’re helping underprivileged kids get into college. Totally got it.”

Although many of the best bits of an FBI affidavit – presenting the case against the accused parents – have been widely circulated, this sublime page-turner deserves to be enjoyed in full, if not put up for literary awards pending film adaptation (Laura Dern has been suggested for Felicity Huffman), and made compulsory reading in all admission departments. It’s not just that extracts can’t convey the fathomless entitlement and mendacity exhibited by affluent, ostensibly respectable parents. They can’t begin to do justice to the affidavit’s entertainment value as savage social comedy, something productions of Molière often attempt, but rarely achieve.

Even the dramatis personae, in the investigation the FBI named “Operation Varsity Blues”, reads like an updated Tartuffe: “Todd Blake is an entrepreneur and investor. Diane Blake is an executive at a retail merchandising firm.” Here, too, cultivated, fluent people, many of whom also sound deluded, greedy and hypocritical, appear to be playing with their children’s lives for no reason beyond self-gratification. But the dialogue, when not jaw-dropping, races along (“And it works?” asks a defendant. “Every time.”), the plots and motives are horribly plausible, and the jeopardy is evidently real to the alleged conspirators, even if the all-encompassing irony of their alleged scheme is not. “She actually won’t really be part of the water polo team, right?”

And from a fellow future defendant, on the risks, if this status-enhancing, child-perfecting scam were to be discovered: “You know, the, the embarrassment to everyone in the communities. Oh my God, it would just be – yeah. Ugh.”

Are FBI affidavits regularly as good as the tale of Operation Varsity Blues? If so, the death of the novel should be easier to bear. Although this document has one overriding purpose – to show that accused parents and witnesses colluded in fraudulent applications – special thanks are due to special agent Laura Smith, the author, who never writes a dull page. Maybe the individual cases were fully as compelling as this edited evidence suggests. Or maybe agent Smith’s organisation of her material really does indicate considerable, dry artistry? Either way, you cherish the detail when an accused parent replies, following an allegedly fraudulently extracted college offer: “This is wonderful news! [high-five emoji].”

  Actress Felicity Huffman has been indicted in the university admissions scandal. Photograph: David McNew/AFP/Getty Images

Ditto Smith’s generous quotation from a statement provided for a girl who has been reinvented, apparently for scam purposes, as a “US Club Soccer All American”: “On the soccer or lacrosse etc I am the one who looks like a boy amongst girls with my hair tied up, arms sleeveless, and blood and bruises from head to toe.”

Not, of course, that’s there’s anything illegal, here or in the US, about reproducing personal statements from professional suppliers or collaborating with a teacher and/or parent – the latter, though risibly unfair, is routine. Another Varsity Blues alleged tactic, that of buying a diagnosis requiring extra exam time, may have no exact UK parallel but, according to a 2017 BBC report, one in five children in independent schools received extra time for GCSE and A-levels. David Kynaston and David Green, in a powerful critique of independent schools, recently pointed out various advantages, made possible by high fees: “Far greater resources are available for diagnosing special needs, challenging exam results and guiding university applications.”

If, mercifully, UK universities are low on dependable side doors, the shamelessness of some of the US defendants, as they appear to pursue their imagined birthright (Ivy League bragging rights) can still sound uncomfortably familiar. Many British parents, equally fearful of mediocrity, are similarly unabashed on local tricks and stratagems – not only private education, but house moves, music lessons (for reserved school places), intensive coaching, internships, resits, religious conversions, fake addresses, and, the Times now reports, FOI requests to Oxbridge, from disappointed parents – that will end up, added to financial and cultural capital, delivering much the same outcome as the US scandal. Legal or otherwise, the result is enhanced educational opportunities for the privileged and untalented, fewer for the talented but disadvantaged.

The pervasive cunning is hardly surprising given the official esteem for “sharp-elbowed” parental operators, who, David Laws once argued, set a fine example. It follows, as demonstrated by UK politicians on all sides, that extreme resourcefulness in, say, keeping places from less fortunate residents, is readily passed off as understandable dedication as opposed to insatiable self-interest. Don’t we all want [smiling face with halo emoji] the best for our kids?

Following some unspecified epiphany, David Cameron, of previously wavering faith, secured places at an oversubscribed church school, some distance from No 10, requiring proof of “Sunday worship in a church at least twice a month for 36 months before the closing applications date”. Equally instructively, my own, affluent MP, Emily Thornberry, had, earlier, hoovered up three of the few precious places at an outstanding, part-selective school in Hertfordshire, 13 miles from home, which tradition annually reserves for her Islington constituents. On Twitter, she has reminded critics: “All my children educated in the state sector.” There is no suggestion that either MP has broken any laws.

There must be, beyond legality, some ethically significant factor that makes non-paying wangling infinitely superior to the ugly, US variety. But you probably have to buy a place at Harvard to find out what it is.

Lottery of NHS drugs punishes the dying

Thousands of patients denied life-extending treatments approved by health watchdog

Despite certain drugs approved by the NHS rationing body, at least 14,000 patients a year are not receiving them Photo: ALAMY

By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent

7:42PM GMT 21 Jan 2014

154 Comments

Thousands of patients suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses are being denied the drugs they need from the NHS, according to a report.

Even though the treatments have been approved by the health service rationing body, at least 14,000 patients a year are not receiving them.

As many as one in three of those suffering from some types of cancer are going without medication that could extend their lives, the figures show.

Experts said the report, from the Health and Social Care Information Centre, a government quango that provides NHS statistics and analysis of trends in health and social care, exposed an “endemic and disastrous postcode lottery” of care within the health service.

Charities said the findings were “alarming” and meant patients were being condemned to an early death because local NHS bodies were failing to fund drugs even though they had been proven to work. 

When the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) was created by the last Labour government, officials promised to end the variation in medical treatment across the country and ensure that if a drug was found to be effective, patients should not have to fight to get it.

However, the findings show that thousands of patients suffering from cancer, motor neurone disease and an eye condition which is the most common cause of blindness, are not being given the best medication.

The research examined 10 common treatments which have been backed by Nice, meaning they should be given to all patients who require them.

It found that in three of the groups, there was a gulf between the number of patients who should have been given the drugs and the numbers who were actually prescribed them.

The worst findings were for kidney cancer, which affects more than 8,000 patients a year, and for a form of motor neurone disease which affects almost 3,000 people.

One in three patients who could have benefited from sunitinib (which has the brand name Sutent) and pazopanib (brand name Votrient), life-extending drugs for kidney cancer, or from riluzole (brand name Rilutek), the only treatment for motor neurone disease, did not receive them.

More than 12,000 patients were denied injections for wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most common cause of vision loss and blindness.

Nice makes rulings on whether drugs are effective and good value, but has been criticised for refusing to support drugs in the face of evidence that they can extend lives by months or even years, and for delaying decisions.

But the findings suggest that even when Nice says NHS bodies must fund the drugs, thousands of patients are still denied medication.

Charities said too many terminally-ill patients ended up fighting bureaucratic procedures in an attempt to secure NHS funding for treatment.

In other cases, they were never told about drugs such as Sutent, which can double life expectancy with kidney cancer to 28 months, and was approved by Nice more than four years ago.

Andrew Wilson, the chief executive of the Rarer Cancers Foundation, said patients were suffering from “an endemic postcode lottery in access to Nice-approved medicines”.

“It is extremely worrying that the NHS does not seem to be making available cancer treatments to all patients who could benefit, even when the drug is approved by Nice,” he said.

Nick Turkentine, the chief operating officer of the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer, said the failure to follow national guidance was “a disaster” for patients with aggressive cancers. He said: “Sutent was one of the first drugs to be approved for kidney cancer — it is really disastrous that patients are still having to battle for a drug which we know can give several extra years of life.”

Duleep Allirajah, the head of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, said: “Patients do not choose which cancer they get. Every patient deserves equal access to treatment no matter who they are, where they are from, or which cancer they have.”

A spokesman for Nice said the organisation hoped the report would help ensure that guidance was followed more widely, and that local NHS groups needed to be able to justify variations from it.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “Patients have a right to drugs and treatments that have been approved by Nice and we expect the NHS to provide them if they are needed.

“That is why the chief executive of the NHS has written to the local NHS requiring them to publish which NHS organisations are funding and using drugs and treatments approved by Nice, and which are not.”

Drugs whose use was lower than expected:

• Riluzole (Rilutek) - the only treatment for motor neurone disease - 35 per cent of patients who would have been expected to receive the drugs did not.

• Sunitnib (Sutent) and pazopanib (Votrient) for kidney cancer - 32 per cent of patients who would have been expected to receive the drugs did not.

• Ranibizumab (Lucentis) - the most effective treatment for wet age-related macular degeneration, which can cause blindness - 5 per cent of patients who would have been expected to receive the drugs did not.