The Battle of Waterloo was supposedly won on the playing fields of Eton. Less happily, the behaviour of our major public schools are creating a far from level playing field in modern education.

Three of our grandest – Eton, Charterhouse and Winchester – have been caught up in the exam cheating row. At Eton, the deputy head was dismissed after allegedly sharing information about a forthcoming economics paper with pupils.

Why, you may wonder, does this matter?

Well, partly it is simply unfair on all the other pupils who toiled long into the night revising in the run up to their GCSE exams. These are not victimless crimes. I feel especially sorry for those students whose grades were nullified. They were only doing what their