Letters: Hard thinking needed to widen university access

Rather than university intake necessarily having to reflect society as suggested by Simon Hughes (Universities must cut private school intake, 8 January), the universities' mission is to take the best from society and help them develop them into critically thinking, challenging and competent members of that society for the greater good of all.

If, at present, the calibre of applicants from the private school sector exceeds that of state school children, this surely reflects not that universities are recruiting according to class-based criteria but that the state education system is failing to produce the numbers of equally high-calibre candidates capable of intellectual pursuit at university level. Hughes is promoting social engineering designed to control and fetter the university system.

As a professor of social work, whose work and discipline concerns the eradication of disadvantage and marginalisation, I can only think that Hughes's view obfuscates the real location of the problem: a lack of social and educational support earlier in life, which has grave implications for our future cultural, intellectual and economic life as a nation. It is time to move away from uncritical political correctness, which is what his position promotes, to an analytic stance which values hard thinking, analysis and challenge, and develops policy accordingly.

Professor Jonathan Parker

Bournemouth

??Simon Hughes points out that the new "reforms" mean extra money for universities and tells them to use it in order to attract pupils from poorer backgrounds. Let's be clear. None of the universities wanted their extra money to come in this way. Why? Because it makes it more difficult to attract students from poorer backgrounds. This is because getting into high levels of debt in the assurance that you will make enough to repay it later is the sort of approach that appeals to investment bankers looking for leverage, not people of modest income whose principle is always to avoid debt. The children of the well-off are prepared to risk debt (or their parents can afford to keep them out of it). The children of the poor, however bright they are and however much they are promised various "special exemptions", will be profoundly averse to such a system.

Dr Mark Corner

Brussels, Belgium

??While I disagree with the coalition's proposals on tuition fees, I concur with Simon Hughes on this issue. Last year we were told that pupils from independent schools achieved less than 30% of the total number of A* grades at A-level, which means that over 70% of all A* grades were achieved in state schools. In other words, well over twice as many A* grades at A-level were achieved in state schools than independents.

Despite this, privately educated pupils, already advantaged by being taught in smaller classes etc, are apparently entitled to almost half the places at Oxbridge. Doesn't research also show, when comparing students with similar A-level grades on entry, that state school students outperform the privately educated at university? There may be many reasons why relatively few students from comprehensives get into Oxbridge, but it is not their lack of ability.

Tony Burgess

St Ives, Cambridgeshire

??Simon Hughes's suggestion that universities reduce their intake of privately educated students is astonishing in the light of changes that restrict funding to state sixth forms and discourage (through higher tuition fees) poorer students from entering higher education. Universities rightly select the best students on the basis of the only relevant information ? exam results.

As the assistant head of a sixth form in a large comprehensive, I work tirelessly alongside my colleagues to achieve the best possible outcomes for our students. We all know that differences in educational achievement exist between the state and private sectors but it is the role of government, not educational institutions at any level, to be the principal engineers and drivers of social change.

The causes and consequences of inequality may be numerous and complex, but they are not a total mystery. Education changes lives, and the present ideologically based meddling, coupled with responsibility-dodging under the guise of offering greater independence and opportunity within a nebulous "big society", will not do when the stakes for individual students and society are so high.

Universities should not lower or alter the bar in order to advantage state-educated students, but governments must do their job properly in identifying, funding and supporting appropriately all areas which influence or exaggerate the difference in educational outcome between the state and private sectors.

Dr Kathy Fawcett

Bristol

??Simon Hughes is wrong to assume that independent schools obstruct social mobility (No more Mr Nice Guy, 8 January). The charity IntoUniversity, in partnership with my own school, has assisted hundreds of students from deprived areas in applying to top academic institutions. It has done so by inspiring children as young as seven to work hard and aim high. To seek to deny these youngsters places at university on the basis of where they studied blights their chances and strikes at the very heart of efforts to widen access.

Patrick Derham

Headmaster, Rugby school

??With just over 7.2% of pupils in England attending private schools, will Simon Hughes also be advising the Lib Dems to be more selective in seeking state-educated MPs? According to the Sutton Trust, 40% of Lib Dem MPs were educated in independent schools (54% of Conservative MPs and 15% of Labour MPs were also educated privately). Or is this yet another case of our MPs demonstrating double standards?

Stuart Allan

Nottingham

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