Sta,—Both Mr. Hunt and Dr. Maxwell Garnett assume that schools
maintained or aided by Local Education Authorities can be adequately compared with independent schools by reference to the relative success of their pupils in the competitions for open scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge. But may a Cambridge man remind your readers that there are other universities in the United Kingdom besides Oxford and Cam- bridge, and that, for one reason or another, able boys and girls from main- tained or aided schools may tend to prefer one of these universities? Thus, when Mr. Hunt says that thirty-five L.C.C. schools obtained only eight entrance scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, whereas nine indepen- dent London schools gained twenty-six, it is relevant to ask whether many of the pupils of the L.C.C. schools did not prefer to enter London's own university. Certainly in Scotland, where the pupils of the L.E.A. schools go as a matter of course to one of the four Scottish universities, it would be absurd to argue that the independent schools must be superior because they win more Oxford and Cambridge scholarships.—
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