MY chosen topic was “Why Private Schools Should be Banned”. It was an exercise set by my English teacher to "create a project about a topic you feel strongly about".

The problem was, at 12, I was three weeks into my first year at a private school. Word had reached the highest level that there was "a person with views" in S1. As I walked down a pitch black, 10-metre-long corridor, I remained steadfastly sure that my wide-ranging research (a survey of eight children from both state and private schools), and in-depth questioning (are private schools good or bad?) would see me through this momentary hiccup in creating this seemingly seditious pamphlet (seven had replied ‘bad’).

But, in the four minutes it took for the red traffic light at the end of the tunnel of doom, to turn to green, and the Heidie’s voice to boom “Come!”, I wobbled. Yes it’s true! I was indeed a dirty socialist interloper sent from a 70s housing estate state primary school to this small, all-girl, private school to undermine it and ultimately bring about its collapse.

When it came to thinking about schools for my own children, surprisingly the simplicity of my survey did not help. I talked to other parents. One friend, who I visited on a sunny April morning at her and her husband’s six-bedroom house, complete with a Porsche 911 gleaming in the driveway, told me that they were sending their children to the local state school because they felt school was not just about academics.

“It’s about learning life lessons, coming across a range of people, problems and ‘stuff’ so that real life doesn’t come as a massive surprise.”

But then there was another friend of mine in Perth who is an NHS worker. She stridently told me she would rather starve than not have sent her son to private school for the last 18 years. She herself had been a quiet child who had struggled in a large state primary school and fell behind, before being moved to our private school.

“There were months mum couldn’t pay, but the school helped out. Yes, I was at school with girls who had race horses in the front garden, but I didn’t feel any different.”

She found it hard to catch up with her reading and writing. “I didn’t want that for my son, who was quite introverted as well.” It had been exceptionally hard for her to pay the fees for his school. She paused before adding “Remember all those times I couldn’t come to Glasgow to see you girls? Well that was because I didn’t have the money to put petrol in the car.”

I could see a little of what my friend was so passionate about: I really admired the seemingly over-arching confidence of the girls I had been at school with. I craved that confidence for my children. We were a purposeful, articulate and loyal bunch. We stretched our wings in the sciences, creative writing and Latin.

We were surprisingly diverse too - from the children of the inherited rich to the daughters of the just-recently-got rich. From the off-spring of immigrants who’d arrived with a fiver in their pockets to the few girls who faced abuse walking through some of Glasgow’s poorer areas to get to the school, we were quite a motley crew.

As a Muslim, I was proud to inform my parents that my best friends were a Jew and a Christian. We confidently asserted ourselves, and expressed our ideas freely, perhaps without fear of what any boys in the class might think of us. Most, if not all, of us assumed we would go to university or college and then onto work.

But I often wondered if our confidence was a bit like our school uniform, and indeed our accents - something we put on, to homogenise us, to make us a type, maybe to cover up or compensate for any wee shortcomings we might have had.

We were also utterly terrified of the kids from the local state school. They sat on a wall nonchalantly eating chips as we walked by, but we actually thought they wanted to kill us - a perfect example of how a lack of contact, breeds fear. It floors me to think that, 40 years later, a close friend and colleague, Kate, who I cannot even contemplate starting a work project without, was one of those chip-eating ‘terrors’.

I knew that sort of insularity and lack of, as I saw it, individuality was not what I wanted for my own children.

Ultimately, both had six years at state school, having encountered young people from a wide spectrum of backgrounds and abilities, accents and sensibilities.

I watch them in their workplaces interact with customers with an ease I could have only dreamt of. They describe nights out that involve skillful de-escalations of potentially difficult situations with groups of other young men in the street.

They are quietly confident but always attuned to the group dynamic. Most importantly I value their individuality, and their determination to go against the flow or fashion. They may not have particular loyalties to their old school tie, but perhaps that's not a bad thing.