Comment: Letters + emails

• Published in: The Observer (London)
• Main Author: Jo Edkins Joan Smith Bill Grant Jon Choppin Robin Milner-Gulland Clarence Barrett
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) Guardian News & Media Limited 24.08.2014
• Subjects: Barrett, Robin Milner-Gulland Clarence; Choppin, Bill Grant Jon
• ISSN: 0029-7712

Will Hutton says that "the Sutton Trust reports that four private schools and one sixth form college in Cambridge send as many students to Oxbridge as nearly 2,000 state schools". ("If Britain wants a smarter society, it must favour poorer students", Comment, last week.) It seems odd to me that people use this fact to point out where the state system is going wrong, rather than asking the question: "What is this particular state sixth form college in Cambridge doing right?" Hills Road college assumes that many of its students are capable of getting to Oxbridge. It has high academic standards. It trains the Oxbridge hopefuls in interview techniques. Why can't other schools and sixth form colleges do the same? Oliver Bullough writes: "The fact that Putin stole Crimea [odd use of "fact"!] . . . was the first annexation in Europe since the Second World War" (Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches From Kiev, New Review, last week). Well, Khrushchev "stole" Crimea in 1954 and annexed it to Ukraine without consulting its people; wasn't that the first? The proposal to impose a local levy for those living near parks may work in San Francisco, but any similar scheme in Britain would simply create a divide between the "haves" and "have nots" ("Would you pay 'park tax' to keep the grass cut, crime down - and your house price up?", News, last week).