Primary contest

The independent advantage starts early – frighteningly early, if you’re a parent, says Fraser Nelson

 Fifty per cent of children are of below-average intelligence, but try telling that obvious fact to their parents. Humans are programmed to find their offspring mesmerisingly delightful, and to consider them strikingly quick learners and budding geniuses. I know I do. But like many parents, I promised myself I would not let it drive me to delusional paranoia or make me project on the poor lad my own ambitions. Certainly, when it came to primary school, I was going to relax. How much can they learn at that age, anyway?

My mum and sister, both professional primary teachers, had warned me not to succumb to what they saw as the peculiarly English, middle-class phenomenon of worrying about primary schooling. I went to my local state primary, as did everyone I know. I only found about the social distinctions in early education a few years ago, when I asked George Osborne if it was true he went to primary school with Nathaniel Rothschild.