Fielding didn't labour for 30 years at the chalk face to render his pupils illiterate and innumerate.
There is interesting follow-up work to be done here on teachers', parents' and peers' responses to poorer children achieving grades above expectations, and indeed how this plays out across gender, ethnicity and for pupils with additional needs.
In a 2002 pamphlet they argued that pupils should be funded on an individual basis, with schools given incentives to accept those from less privileged backgrounds.
Kelly, who had gathered together female pupils for his lecture, referred to a recent anti-rape advert.
The minister who condemned historic indulgence of sink schools was in effect proposing to deny struggling pupils the chance to earn any respected qualifications at all.
According to the government, the programme has raised enrolment rates from 5.3 million pupils to 8.5 million.
But the increasing school rolls have not been matched with resources, despite ambitious government targets to cut the ratios of pupils to teachers, desks and books.
"We are also looking at working with community groups based in the city, such as Brighton and Hove 10 10, to encourage other streets and organisations in the city, to start measuring their energy use," says Bird, who has recently been approached by one school, keen to set up an electricity-use measuring project with its pupils.
(One recent survey found that school pupils thought men taking their wives' surnames would demonstrate a "weak character" but the reverse would show women were "grown-up").
Figures show that poverty is having serious effects on pupils' attainment rates in schools, and Wales has the highest death rates for drug misuse in the UK.
And if schools teach about religious law, "pupils should be made aware of the difference between the law of the land and religious law".
