Too Sophisticated?

If this is the case, then the teachers in fee-paying schools should band together and set up an examination board, on a co-operative basis and preferably affiliated to all the usual organs of the mutual movement, not least in order to safeguard their schools' otherwise decidedly questionable charitable status. In fact, they should do this anyway.

The best state schools could then distinguish themselves, in both senses of the term, by engaging the services of that board. Of course, this would involve the wider use of the IB in the state sector, with its requirement that everyone pass what in Britain would be English, as well as Maths, at least one science, and at least one modern foreign language.

And it would involve lifting the ban on state domestic consumption of the export-strength IGCSE, which is deemed too hard for less than perfectly posh pupils in this, its country of origin. By contrast, Thatcher's GCSE actually marks down candidates whose answers are "too sophisticated". Seriously.