DIARY
CHARLES MOORE Cambridge has now completed its selection of applicants for the coming autumn. For the first time, it has used the new system of admission. The seventh- term entrance examination has gone. Most now apply in the fourth term in their school sixth form. They are considered only on the basis of their school reports and an Interview at their chosen college. The point of this change was not to improve academic standards, but to make it easier for pupils from comprehensive schools to be admit- ted, since it was argued that most compre- hensives could not manage the seventh term teaching. What has been the result? First, much more uncertainty. Applicants have much less idea of what criteria of merit are being used: selectors have to make far more guesses about the abilities of the applicants, since they are generally younger than before and have so little to show for themselves. Second, confusion between colleges. The strains of operating such a subjective system have led colleges to introduce different methods of admis- sion. Some ask for examples of written work; others do not. Some set their own little exam (the new rules permit only one hour: the colleges stretch this by adding an extra half hour to read the paper). Third, further advantages for those from indepen- dent schools. Since the system is more muddled and varied, schools that are well 'plugged in' to the university can advise their pupils much more astutely about choice of colleges than those which are not. This was less true when the main basis of admission was a straightforward exam. Last, and most important, a decline of academic quality. The knowledge and in- tellectual ability of candidates simply are not tested any more. Dons are letting them in merely by guessing their potential. Fourth term applicants from bad schools have so little hard material in their favour that the guesses are bound to be wild. How, for instance, can one judge a boy who wants to read English, who has never read any poetry except for compulsory Shakespeare or any pre-20th century fic- tion (this is quite common, apparently) and never taken even an A level in the subject? Anyone wanting to maintain standards in anything has to be as rigorous and clear as Possible. Who would suggest, for instance, that applicants who do not reach the normal standard of the driving test should be allowed to pass because they suffer from having attended bad driving schools? Who Would admit pupils to the Royal College of Music who say that they are very musical but cannot, as it happens, play or sing a note? How much worse to monkey with the integrity of a great university. By lowering its standards, Cambridge has betrayed itself. The truth is that state education — in the humanities, at least — is simply worse than it was. One Cambridge college which runs a history essay prize for schools has recently received a sad letter from the head of history at a London sixth-form college led' by local comprehensives. She says that she has always encouraged her pupils to try for Oxford and Cambridge, often despite opposition from her colleagues. In the past ten years, her college has had more than 30 successful 'Oxbridge' app- lications. But now the pupils, she says, are too ignorant to enter the essay prize or, with the odd exception, to try for good universities. 'The different centuries are a meaningless blur to them: they have no understanding of words like "liberal", "society", "values", "construction", "gov- ernment", and as for religion, well enough said'. 'New history A Level stu- dents remember having "done" the medieval village, transport through the ages and an 0 Level syllabus based on the history of medicine'. One pupil recently told her that Shakespeare was alive in 1820.
Ihad thought that it was a convention of sex scandals that the press had at least to pretend that there was some matter of public interest at stake: blackmail, for example. The case of Sir Ralph Halpern and 'topless teenager model Fiona Wright' appears to have made this rule a thing of the past. Even the Sunday Telegraph splashed the story on its front page without any attempt at justification. The only reported commercial impropriety seems to have been that Sir Ralph let Fiona use a card giving her 25 per cent off at all Burton shops; but then we learn that it was her abuse of this amazing privilege that caused Sir Ralph to end it all six weeks ago. One feels sorry for Fiona, however. According to the Daily Star, she told 'photographer Dave Muscroft' that she wanted to profit from the friendship: "She kept mention- ing who her boyfriend was. It seemed as though she was trying to find a way of cashing in to help her career". ' The poor girl was only trying to follow Sir Ralph's recipe for success, as told to the Financial Times the week before: ' "I want someone who's earning £8,000 a year now to want to get to the top" ', "such words as loyalty and job satisfaction are not relevant any more. . . ." ' According to the New Statesman, Duncan Campbell's revelations about the Zircon spy satellite are justified by the fact that it has happened without the know- ledge of the parliamentary committee which was given a categorical promise that it would be told of such projects. But the chairman of the committee, Mr Robert Sheldon, a Labour MP, denies that the committee was bypassed. So what is the justification?
Contemplating the New Statesman's hour of glory, I wonder what would hap- pen if the police raided the Spectator's offices. No doubt they would go through the files. Never having done so myself, I should be most interested to know what treasures they unearth. Incriminating stuff, no doubt. Letters signed 'Bron' — presum- ably a disaffected mole — demanding money with menaces from an obviously bogus address in Somerset; copies of let- ters to the same 'Bron' from a Nigel Lawson trying to silence him; a piece by me called 'Better red than dead' (a defence of the old telephone box); bills from one P. Carter-Ruck so large that they should never have avoided preliminary scrutiny. It would all be very embarrassing. But I would happily endure it if the officers were able to find that elusive cache of unre- turned articles for whose return the au- thors politely and fruitlessly and frequently plead.
We apologise for the delay in starting this year's grand Treasure Hunt. It will begin next week, based on a system of twin towns and will run for eight weeks. The first prize will be £2,000 worth of Framling- ton Unit trusts generously donated by the management. Next week's Diarist will be Stan Gebler Davies, reporting on his own campaign as Conservative and Unionist candidate for Cork South West. His elec- tion address appears on page 14.
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