to leading the holidays. A year after that they are typically head-down revising for finals but quite possibly on the organising committee.’

Each of two, week-long holidays involve 16 Key Stage 2 children (aged 7-11), with a high ratio of student staff to children. All the students have to pass a battery of safeguarding checks but Catherine says that this was always so and a natural part of the process.

The children are usually drawn from Blackbird Leys, one of Oxford’s housing estates that has become a poster-child for severe deprivation in an otherwise wealthy city.