The aggressively affluent have a different attitude to education from most of us. For them, it’s not just about exam results or Oxbridge success. What use are those anyway, when dad is loaded and the kid is destined to be a rock star, actor or hedge-funder? Or, indeed, if you are Peaches Geldof and claim to earn in excess of £250,000 before you’ve even taken your A levels?

Social ambition is the new priority: aspirational parents regard schools as a fresh networking community for the whole family, every bit as potent as a private members’ club. The school gates, parents’ evenings and fund-raisers are as much about placating the rabid paranoia of socially myopic mothers as they are about teaching the kids. “Independent schools are far more than institutions in which to prepare students for exams,” says Mark Palmer, the editor of Tatler’s annual Schools Guide. “They’re communities, each with its own character, spirit and priorities.”

Proximity to home is not that important (the committed cool-school hunter is prepared to travel long distances), but a posh location is paramount. The school should also be near a branch of Itsu or Wagamama, for the older kids’ school dinners, and Starbucks, for the mums. At the Harrodian, a mixed school in Barnes, southwest London, which is popular with rock and fashion dynasties, they’ve gone one step further and installed a cafe where mums can sit around slurping lattes until it’s time to meet the curtain lady or get to that urgent LaStone massage appointment.

The facility must be bandbox smart and have a uniform straight out of J M Barrie (or, in the more rock’n’roll locales, no uniform at all). The teaching methods should be astringently strict or louchely bohemian, depending on your career and postcode. Ideally, there should be at least three or four pupils who have very famous parents.

Why? Because while the kids do their homework, mum and dad need to network. While daughter is getting a crush on a sixth-former during a ski holiday, mum gets her floaty freak on with Nigella at the fete. The number of celebrity offspring is every bit as defining and ego-boosting for parents as a swimming silver or the lead in the Nativity.

Yes, using your kids as innocent, saccharine entrées into more complex adult environments is a social taboo, but, believe me, it goes on. I’ve seen it. Famous pupils provide golden opportunities for name-dropping among parents, delightfully needless car-sharing duties, the glorious frisson of throwaway conversations with someone off the telly at the gates and invitations to the celeb kid’s party, where flutes of champagne will be served as magicians perform and other celebs mill about. And then, the thing that makes all the hard work and endless revision worthwhile, the dinner-party invitation.

At the apogee of stellar schooling, you even get famous-on-famous child networking. Peaches Geldof hung out with Bill Oddie’s daughter Rosie at Queen’s College in Harley Street, London. Lily Allen is another former Queen’s College pupil. Perhaps they should change its name to Fame Academy.

It’s not all about famous kids, though. At Garden House, in Chelsea, London, oligarchal riches take precedence over poor old fame. The preparatory school is described by one mum who went on a tour of the school for her young daughter as “a social club for the parents and a finishing school for toddlers”. Come afternoon pickup time, its gates have the highest Hermès Birkin bag count in the country.

The staff at Garden House – where Ralph Lauren is clearly one of the three Rs – seem to acknowledge this, and feel no embarrassment about playing along. The aforementioned working Chelsea mum recalls her trip to the headmistress’s office for an interview. “It was weird,” she says. “It was the only school we visited where the parents were assessed with as much intensity as the child.”

They were asked about their jobs, friends and social lives. Even mum’s winter tan was noted. “ Have you been away?” the teacher asked. “Yes – St Barts,” she replied, “as the guest of a friend.” That was the right answer. “At that point, she lit up. ‘Oh, how lovely! I have lots of St Barts children here.’ She then proceeded to name-drop all the wealthy types and Euro aristos who had kids at the school. It was most odd.”

How did all this happen? As soon as the glamorous, newsworthy and financially priapic careerists who made their fortunes and reputations in the late 1990s – the YBAs, the W11 movie crowd, the hedge-funders and the chefs – started to reproduce, the educational-social paradigm shifted towards the parents.

When it comes to educating their offspring, this lot want schools that tick all the right boxes for their lives as well as those of their children.

Want him to be able to play the blues and pull a groupie? Maybe you should consider Ibstock Place (aka the School of Rock), in Roehampton, Surrey, where Lizzy Jagger (Mick’s daughter) and Leah Wood (Ronnie’s daughter) went to school. Want her to be a nu-YBA? At Prior Weston in Shoreditch, east London, a fundraising event recently auctioned off works of art by the artists Rachel Whiteread and Gavin Turk, who have kids there, helping to raise a none-too-shabby £24,000. Across town at an Islington school, one parent bid a sizeable sum for Chris Martin to play the piano at his home – Paul Makin, Coldplay’s business manager, being another parent.

Of course, you can stay trad and select your child’s education old-school style. Eton is still best for meeting British royals and African princes. The perennially fashionable, coed boarding school Bedales, where pupils are on first-name terms with teachers, attracts a reliable stream of nice, creative types (Jude Law and Sadie Frost visited recently), while Francis Holland in super-posh SW1, where Jemima Khan, Vanessa-Mae and Chloe Delevigne are among the alumni, turns out (and I’m quoting Tatler here) “absolutely gorgeous and remarkably unneurotic girls . . . most of them blonde”.

But where’s the fun in all that old-fashioned nonsense when you learn that at the Knightsbridge, a new prep school in Kensington, started by the City boy Hugh Warrender, pupils take swimming lessons in the private pool owned by, wait for it, Pia Getty – daughter of the billionaire Robert W Miller and sister of Marie-Chantal of Greece and Alexandra von Furstenberg? Excuse the name-dropping – I just can’t help it.

COOL SCHOOLS

GARDEN HOUSE SCHOOL
Famous pupils Hedge-fund kids, European royalty and the daughters of oligarchs.

School-gate look Euro chic meets Middle Eastern swank – blacked-out Range Rovers, big labels, big sunglasses, and big blow-dries, with even more bounce outside the NYC branch.

After graduation They will never fly commercial again.

THE HARRODIAN
Famous pupils Rock stars’ grandchildren and sons and daughters of fashionistas.

School-gate look Toyota Prius, Nuala yoga kit and soy latte.

After graduation A good working knowledge of Ibiza’s summer parties and high-street fashion.

PRIOR WESTON
Famous pupils Gavin Turk, Rachel Whiteread and Cornelia Parker all have children here.

School-gate look Paint-spattered dungarees, NHS glasses and a bicycle.

After graduation An ability to express their feelings through large-scale art installations – by the age of 11.

QUEEN’S COLLEGE
Famous pupils Peaches and Pixie Geldof, Lily Allen and Rosie Oddie.

School-gate look Concerned about global poverty, but keen on a party: think hemp clothing and a designer handbag.

After graduation Mouthy, precocious and fully paid-up members of the MySpace set.

ETON
Famous pupils Princes William and Harry, Zac Goldsmith and 19 prime ministers.

School-gate look A muddied Volvo estate, the family pearls and a Brora cardigan – it’s dreadfully common to look like you’ve tried too hard.

After graduation Decent prospects of a place in Cameron’s shadow cabinet.

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