The complaint by the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference that plans to widen access to the most selective universities may “discriminate against young people based on the class they were born into” is almost beyond parody (‘Class bias’ in plan to widen university access, private schools claim, 29 January). What is class if it’s not structural and cultural discrimination against people based on their birth? Unless the HMC believe that poorer people are actually less clever than others, then they must accept that the purpose of independent schools is to perpetuate class discrimination by keeping those poor students (apart from a token few on bursaries) out of the best universities and jobs.
Mark Walford
London
• How myopic and deplorable for supporters of private education to criticise plans to widen access to universities such as Cambridge and Oxford by arguing that they will deny places to UK students based on their class.
That is exactly what has happened to generation after generation of working-class students denied access to those institutions. Of course there have been exceptions, of which I am luckily one, but exceptions prove the rule. There has been massive, unnecessary and damaging discrimination on the grounds of class. How can anyone possibly justify a grossly unfair system? Is it blindness to the obvious or gross hypocrisy?
Prof Colin Richards
Spark Bridge, Cumbria
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