You have to admire the chutzpah and bare-faced cheek of the “top public schools” and their total inability to acknowledge their own history. Inability to inspire? Maybe we could start with two centuries of the rote learning of dead languages.

Then there was the “games cult” where pupils would spend hours and hours playing cricket. After the Boer War, public schools created their Combined Cadet Forces producing the officer material that uncritically led their men to the slaughter of the First World War.

As for targets and league tables, let us not forget the prep schools that relentlessly pressure young children with mock exams and revision over three or four years for the common entrance exam.

Richard Knights, Liverpool.