19 NOVEMBER 1954, Page 24

Sm,—About your comment on the PEP Broadsheet last week, surely

the main reason for the diminishing numbers of pupils from fee-paying schools who go to Oxford and Cambridge is the unimaginative way in which the means test for scholarships is applied. The pupil whose parents live on a weekly wage can gain full benefit from the scholar- ship he is awarded, and he is no burden to his parents. Those with higher incomes gain little or no benefit from the scholarships their children win and after years of meeting school fees insufficient remains for University expenses. The present system must be detrimental to the Universities, which are in danger. of being confined to one class of, undergraduates, and to the nation, which is training only one section of the best brains.—