The number of foreign students at esteemed institutions like the London School of Economics has skyrocketed. International students now make up nearly 70% of the cohort.

That we treated them in this way is repugnant; that some wish we still were doing so is staggering.

The next generation cannot win back the time the lockdown has cost them.

‘Where students do not have to earn their place but are given it on a plate, what kind of message does that send to those progressing through the education system?’

Mr. Gove had every right to send his child to this school of his choosing. To shine a light on another, far more ideally-located school, the likes of which the general public should hold in high regard, and then to have sent his own child to a school which – in his wife’s words (journalist Sarah Vine) – ‘is not exactly Sinkhouse High’, is an act of great, and condemnable hypocrisy. To further boast about having sent his child to a “state” school is an act of spin, which does discredit to his profession.