Natalie Solent had an amazing new idea yesterday:

Betcha Prince Harry did get help on his coursework. Not so fast with the chopper, Mr Headsman! So does everybody, as Mr White of the Telegraph sagely observes. Not quite everybody, actually. Last year Jenny Sweetham-Klewlesse (18) of The Old Vicarage, Pootlington Parva, did a Social Studies project completely unaided. Interested reporters can contact Miss Sweetham-Klewlesse behind the counter of her local Little Chef.

It can't go on, you know. We need think outside the envelope and find a better way. Surely it is not beyond the bounds of human cunning to devise some sort of system which would actually make it difficult to cheat. Something like, um, gottit, getting all the A-Level candidates to do their coursework in school with no mummies and daddies allowed. No, that wouldn't work - what about the teachers? They have a stronger motive to cheat than anyone. Except the pupils, of course. I know! All the pupils would have to do the coursework the same day. All together in one room. And – and – and no talking to each other. Yes! It's a crazy idea but it might just work – so long as we took away their mobile phones.

Don't look at me like that. We'd give them back afterwards.

Okay, not the mobile phones. They'd have to put them under the desk.

Sorry. Sorry. I've calmed down now. I now see clearly that my idea was ill-judged, not to say intemperate. And contrary to human rights. My party leader has sent me to a local sixth-form college to apologise.

Last night I found myself asking Eamonn Butler of the Adam Smith Institute: why is there still no free market in exams, and why aren't exams consequently okay, like cars or cakes or soya sauce in bottles in the supermarket, instead of a national joke? You'd have to involve industry and a critical mass of the universities he said, and that's hard. But why is this not now happening?

Before I get the usual answer, to the effect that exams are already a "free market" ... exam suppliers may now be "independent", but the government still seems to be the sole or principle customer, with the private sector schools tagging meekly along behind. But why? Why cannot universities and businessmen decide for themselves which exam results they will take seriously, and which not? I'm told that many employers now have their own exams, so clearly lots of employers have already lost faith in the state-purchased exams. So, why don't they shop around?

If the answer is that the government enforces its purchasing preferences on everyone with the force of law, than that means that the exam business already is nationalised, in all but names.