This article, as coruscating as it is well-grounded, sketches the appallingly unfair state of contemporary education in England. It outlines the historical and contemporary drivers of that unfairness and the consequences that ensue in the lives of young people. It calls for a renewed movement on the left to call out the education system's shocking injustice and replace the values which have made that system so resistant to progressive change with an ethos better suited to humane comprehensive education.