We all know there are many schools in Sussex that are facing tough decisions on spending. Which books to stop ordering or classroom assistants to let go. But how about whether the sideboards should be carved mahogany and where to place the exquisite deer sculptures?

Yes, you read that right. While The Argus reported West Sussex County Council faces a £15 million shortfall in funding for education, leaving schools struggling with inadequate resources, it is not all bad news as further east is swanky girls boarding school Roedean, on the outskirts of Brighton, which has made headway after facing some tough luxury interior design choices with its £9 million makeover, completed after two years.

Luckily they managed to get planning permission for each of the 1,200 Arts and Crafts style window latches. Someone must have had some sleepless nights.

Modus or Romo and Sanderson, hardwood floors or carpets for the classrooms are not being mentioned much in the General Election campaign.

The age of austerity? What’s that?

Could there be a starker illustration of the “haves” versus the “have nots”? One Roedean pupil compared her school to a spa following the renovations.

This is indeed how the other half live, and it might not come as a surprise – it is not actually news in itself the fact that the wealthy enjoy a luxurious lifestyle – but nevertheless, the details of the plush new boarding quarters of the Roedean girls might have raised the odd eyebrow among state heads in the current economic climate.

Not only are council-funded schools in West Sussex and elsewhere struggling to balance the books, infinitely more heart-breaking is the constant stream of anecdotal evidence from teachers of children arriving at school hungry, as the poorest families struggle to get by.

Some teachers have even taken to feeding the kids in their class out of their own pocket to ensure that they do not go hungry until lunchtime.

Of course this is not Roedean’s fault.

It is not the existence of independent schools that I have a problem with, or their desire to make their students more comfortable, but something has gone horribly wrong when within one city, a boarding school is transformed into what, judging from the pictures, resembles a luxury hotel, while some families have been hit so hard by welfare cuts, they are wondering where their next meal will come from.

Again not the school’s fault but it is hard to stop juxtaposing the food banks providing an emergency lifeline for growing numbers of people with the revamped dining rooms at Roedean, described by Tatler (which published a spread on the refurbishment in the May issue) as “half farmhouse kitchen, half hipster hangout”.

And as another student said, conditions had previously been “distinctly grotty”. And rightly where there’s a problem with the living conditions of young people, you sort them out, right?

Well it depends which young people one is referring to.

In October last year figures were published that showed 31 per cent of children in Roedean’s constituency Brighton Kemptown were living in poverty, while minutes up the road things were getting all Grand Designs with cushions and light fittings later to be artfully arranged for the benefit of Tatler magazine and for that matter repeated in The Argus.

Why be oversensitive about it? A person would be entitled to ask this question. Independent schools are entitled to spend money on what they see fit. Fees for full-time boarders at Roedean run to upwards of £11,000 a term, so the coffers are unlikely to be empty. You would expect decent scatter cushions for that sort of money.

Why shouldn’t the school court Tatler when its website states: “Tatler has more AB readers than any other publication”.

The timing could not be more fitting: two contrasting stories, West Sussex cuts and Roedean revamp, published within days of each other.

Neither is perhaps surprising in itself, but together they are more proof that something has to be done to bridge this growing inequality.

News of people in the UK struggling to get by has become so commonplace, that it is easy to become desensitised, but in what is supposedly a developed country, how can this be satisfactory?

This is a question for the politicians, but also for the general population of Brighton and Sussex, where in many instances people are living so close together and yet so far apart.