Next week British children will start to swap summer shorts and T-shirts for sensible skirts and trousers as another autumn term begins. Opinions on school uniform are divided: it is either essential for self-respect and team spirit or it’s an anachronism designed to distinguish the privileged from hoi polloi. But few would deny that England’s top independent schools take uniforms to extravagant lengths.

1. Uniforms as fancy dress

If you want your children to lead the country, they need to be trained to stand out from the crowd and Eton College does the job nicely. The Eton tailcoat was originally created for 19th-century gentlemen but remains virtually unchanged for today’s generation of iPod-toting pupils. “There is no better cure for self-consciousness,” wrote JDR McConnell in his 1967 guide to the college.