Bopara is the role-model for the next generation - a boy who scrambled 10 team-mates together from his inner London state school to enter a Capital Kids competition run by the Lord's Taverners, which they won.
Opponents have argued that such schemes will subsidise private schools at the expense of weakening the state sector and that it will leave inner-city state schools, which many pupils will still have to use, in an even more neglected condition.