SIR,—You have allowed me to make my point: it is
in the public interest to ensure that all the ablest boys and girls for whom there is room in the universities and who desire a university education should be properly prepared for it in secondary schools of the highest type. I ask no more. Still, if I may make two comments on Mr. Hunt's last letter, they are these. First, he thinks my proportion of able children is not large enough ; but it was not, as he thinks, five per cent. of the grammar-school children— it was five per cent. of the whole age-group—for whom I demanded the best secondary education ; and English universities only had room for two per cent. of the age-group in 1938 and are only asked by the Barlow Report to double that figure. Second, Mr. Hunt fears that higher secondary schools, such as Rugby or Manchester Grammar School, " might easily become an intellectual forcing-house" ; but surely there is little danger of the best of our English schools giving up Plato's belief that the guardians of the State should be full-blooded human beings as well as
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