My colleague, Isabel Berwick, recently mourned the closure of her fondly remembered all-girls private school, and regretted “a slow societal shift away from girls-only schools and colleges”. As the father of two young daughters, I am paying attention.

Yet “slow” is the operative word. Girls’ schools are clinging on tenaciously in the state sector: more girls go to single-sex schools than boys. In inner London, parental preferences for girls’ schools are particularly pronounced. The Guardian has reported that more than half of inner-London girls attend girls’ schools, and just over a quarter of boys attend boys’ schools. The result, of course, is that the mixed schools contain a disproportionate number of boys.