The Sutton Trust report was published last month and found that four-fifths of the private sector account for nearly one third of all Oxbridge undergraduates each year.

The government’s three billion-pound Sure Start scheme has come under attack yet again with the publication of a report last month claiming that it has had no effect on the skills of preschool children entering primary school.

Last month a guidance paper was released by the DfES leaving it up to individual head teachers to decide what pupils should be allowed to wear in class. The emphasis of the new rules is that head teachers should be able to ban “any garment (that) imposes on a child’s ability to learn or is a safety or security issue.” But the world’s press have seized upon the wording to focus on the controversial full Islam face veil – known as the niqab.

Can the presence of the opposite sex motivate pupils to impress classmates through working harder, or is it just a distraction – particularly for boys – causing them to show off and behave disruptively?