Eton College wrongly sends acceptance offers to hundreds of boys

The £34,000-per year boarding school has launched an investigation into the 'systems error'

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Eton College has apologised to 400 boys and their families after it accidentally emailed them offering them a place.

The elite public school has launched an internal investigation into the email, which was intended for nine boys and which was blamed on a “systems error”.

Families of the successful candidates – due to start in September 2017 – received the email but the glitch caused an extra 400 applicants to be sent the email too, the Guardian reported.

The school said in a statement: “This error was discovered within minutes and each family was immediately contacted to notify them that it should be disregarded and to apologise.

“We take this type of incident very seriously indeed and so a thorough investigation, overseen by the headmaster Tony Little and led by the tutor for admissions, is being carried out to find out exactly what went wrong and ensure it cannot happen again.

“Eton College offers its sincere apologies to those boys concerned and their families. We deeply regret the confusion and upset this must have caused.”

The £34,000-per year boarding school, in Berkshire, counts David Cameron among its glittering alumni, known as Old Etonians. Getting in is very difficult even if your parents can afford the eye-watering fees.

The assessment process begins at age 11 – two years before successful applicants start school. Boys attend an interview, and must submit a report from their current school and pass a reasoning test. Candidates will then be offered to those who get through – before they sit an exam, known as Common Entrance, aged 13.

Around one-in-four applicants is successful.