I've been rich and I've been poor. So I say this with authority: money can't buy happiness but a lack of it can absolutely guarantee sadness.

I feel real empathy, therefore, for Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba's eight-year-old son, who was reportedly left in tears this week after being pulled from his private school mid-term over his parents' financial woes.

This is likely made even more complicated for the poor boy since Ore and his former wife, Portia Jett, who had been married for nine years, confirmed their separation in 2024. Portia has recently opened up on social media about her heartbreak at selling their Tunbridge Wells family home and the subsequent relocation of her children to new schools.

You might say there are bigger problems in the world for young children. But my heart goes out to the boy; it can be terrifying moving to a new school and when it comes to the trajectory of someone's life, the education it starts with – especially in the UK – is important. My brother and I probably wouldn't be where we are today had we not gone to private schools.

Similarly to the Oduba family, mine was fractured and our wealth diminished when my parents divorced. I was five and my brother was three. My father eventually left England, and we went from living in an enormous house in Notting Hill, basking in financial freedom, to a tiny flat where money worries were always front and centre.

That's how I know how much difference it makes. Unlike Ore, who admitted recently to losing a lot of money due to a porn addiction that tragically destroyed his life 'from the inside out', my father kept his children in private education until we were both 18, and to that I owe him everything. We never had money in the bank, but those schools more than made up for it.

My brother Charlie went to Wetherby, with princes William and Harry, and I went to its sister school next door, Pembridge Hall. Princess Diana was a regular on the school run. The smart uniforms were extortionate, the classes small and the teachers exceptional. I have nothing but good memories from those days.

We would have been torn to shreds had we been plucked from that world and sent to state school. Children are cruel. We'd have been ridiculed for our posh voices and shaken by the culture shift.

That's not to say it was smooth-sailing when we went to secondary school. By then we lived in Oxford. Charlie went to St Edward's and I went to Headington, with Emma Watson, who starred in Harry Potter.

Both Charlie and I, alas, suffered from catastrophic mental health problems when we reached our teens. Our ticking genetic time bombs went off, and the neurological kinks (high-functioning autism and severe depression) that run in our family took a firm hold.

My brother might not have survived had it not been for his school. He still bears the scars of his self-harm all over his arms, and more than once was rescued from suicide attempts at school.

His school today costs £60,000 a year. They have a low student to teacher ratio and plenty of resources for 'wayward' kids. Had he been at a large state school in London, the overburdened teachers probably wouldn't even have noticed.

I was self-harming in more metaphorical ways as a teen: running away, stealing things I didn't need, driving without a licence and skipping school. In short, I was an emotional wreck. Luckily the area around my school was safe and I was always reined back in.

It wasn't so much the education itself that had such a profound effect on how our lives would turn out. We were both smart, and smart children can prosper academically under many circumstances. I attended less than 30 per cent of my classes between my GCSEs and A-Levels, owing to my many problems, but still left with straight As.

The social leg-up we got from going to a private school, the mingling with rich, well-connected peers and their parents was also instrumental. I didn't leave school with a single friend from Headington (unsurprisingly, given my state), but to this day, most of the people I know were privately educated. Humans are wired to gravitate towards what feels familiar – subconsciously or not.

There's also a sort of arrogance that's drummed into you in those sorts of establishments – an instilled certainty that you're going to succeed no matter what. That's a powerful attitude to enter the workforce with. It's why almost every Prime Minister we've had was privately educated – and it's a distinctly British phenomenon.

It's not remotely fair, of course, that it's blind luck as to whether you are born into this small club. And it's one of the reasons my husband and I are planning to move to the US next year. We can't afford to send our own two children to private schools – not even close. And that deeply saddens me, precisely because it matters so much in this country, and hardly at all in the States.

If we had the money, I'd probably stay in the UK. Certainly, my son, four, and my daughter, five months, would be headed to fee-paying schools. Anyone who pretends otherwise is lying. Take it from MP Diane Abbott, who in 2003 was forced to admit to sending her son to a private school despite having previously criticised other Labour politicians for doing so.

She later said in an interview: 'I suppose the principled thing to do would have been to send my son to a failing state school. But I'm sorry, I just don't possess that level of principle.'

Ms Abbott's hugely hypocritical instincts were right-on. My brother and I were messy, damaged teens who could so easily have swerved down the wrong path. I'm now a moderately successful journalist with a happy family and my brother is a highly accomplished software engineer. We probably have those ludicrously expensive schools to thank for that.