Private tuition does explode one myth: educational equality. There will always be a market for educational advantage. Those who crusade against private schools may do so in the belief that once everyone is forced to attend the local comprehensive, there might be some levelling of opportunity. This is fantasy: a recent survey showed that almost half of state-school pupils in London had had some form of private tuition in the last five years. Paying for extra help is most certainly not the preserve of the moneyed few who top up £18,000-a-year school fees with a few hours on the side for young Hugo or Petra. 

No wonder the Sutton Trust thinks tuition will "widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots" and the trust's founder Sir Peter Lampl described the impact on equality as "staggering". 

How can we explain this sudden rise in demand for private tuition among state-
educated students? The (mainly London) parents of this new market fear that not paying any school fees will have a deleterious impact on their children — not necessarily because they have poor teachers, but because the strictures of curriculum and Key Stage stymie breadth of knowledge or interest outside passing test after test. 

One of the direst indictments of the current school system is the complete ignorance of history not directly related to the syllabus. One can study the French Revolution and have no idea who Napoleon is — the end date of the course is 1795. It is therefore thought that a certain worldliness and sophistication is necessary to overcome the obstacles of UCAS (the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) or to persuade inundated admissions tutors. This fresh clientele only supplements the steady diet of pupils from private schools, making today an excellent time to enter the cut-throat arena of desperate parents and feckless youths.

Competition for university places has never been steeper. Students from some of the most academically glittering private institutions in the country are told that a single blemish on their record can be the perfect excuse to shift their application to the rejection pile. 

The pressure to admit students from less-advantaged backgrounds makes it even more crucial for private school applicants to achieve a row of 100 per cent marks on AS-level modules — a mere "A" no longer suffices. This, plus all the usual debating decorations, essay prizes and athletics cups: some of my students look half-dead from exhaustion.