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Hostility to Oxbridge

SIR – For many years the Berkshire Cambridge Society has run a freshers’ party for youngsters from Berkshire who have gained a Cambridge place (“Oxford’s private school applications drop”, report, June 1).

About a third of those attending come from comprehensive schools, which educate 80 per cent of our children. A few comprehensive schools are always well represented, but, from talking to the partygoers, most comprehensive schools in Berkshire are indifferent and, in some cases, actually hostile to Oxbridge, regarding it as elitist. My own children attended a comprehensive school and their head teacher at the time – exCambridge himself – was also of that view. All very depressing.

Oxbridge is doing its best, but having to contend with attitudes like this in the teaching profession will mean that many bright children will never make it there. Clive Williams

Upper Basildon, Berkshire

SIR – When I was an Oxford undergraduate in around 1960 our scientific society invited the president of the Flat Earth Society to address us.

We listened to him politely but nevertheless questioned him rigorously (Letters, June 2). To the best of my knowledge, none of us required trauma counselling. Professor CR Hallpike Shipton Moyne, Gloucestershire

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2023-06-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-03T07:00:00.0000000Z

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Daily Telegraph