Don’t blame Oxbridge for bad schools and unambitious teachers

for the failures of the state system. Applications from private schools are often stronger because those pupils have enjoyed a broader education, the best facilities, pushy parents, even extra tuition. They have also been taught confidence, usually including interview technique.

Some people are born with luck and money. It’s the job of state schools – not academics – to level the playing field by raising their own game, and the good news is that more and more are doing just that. Where is the highest-rated school in Britain for A-level results? Lambeth. The King’s College London Mathematics School – one of those free schools that the Left hates – has only been open three years but 23 per cent of its students got a place at Oxford or Cambridge this year.

Of course, you can only get into Oxbridge if you actually apply, and something else that holds poorer kids back is having teachers who don’t think that they should bother. Last year, a Sutton Trust poll found that four out of 10 state school teachers admit they rarely or never advise their brightest pupils to apply. One reason given was the belief that they “won’t be happy there”.

When I was at Cambridge, the radical students complained that the very architecture of the place was elitist and responsible for how white and posh they all were. As a boy from a non-Oxbridge background (neither of my parents even went to university), I found the idea that I might not be able to cope with spires and turrets insulting. That kind of class-war nonsense, like a lot of socialist ideas, hurts the people it’s supposed to help. Enough with the bitterness. Let’s push the talented as far as they can go – to wherever their brains can take them.