When are we going to stop blaming private schools, universities and 'elitism' for the failures of state education?

"State school pupils put off applying for Oxford and Cambridge because their teachers are reluctant to promote elitism," claims the latest report from the achingly worthy Sutton Trust.

Hmm, yes. I'm sure there's the odd case where this is quite possibly true. And I expect if you went looking hard enough among Britain's veritable cornucopia of sink comprehensives, you might also manage to trawl up all sorts of other similarly compelling excuses as to why so relatively-few State-educated kids are g