King's College, Cambridge
SIR,-1 read with interest the article by Mr. Richard Rhodes James on the public schools in your issue of March 19. He wrote that Mr. Crosland is nego- tiating to open public schools to a wider social stratum and he added, 'Two pilot schemes are starting already . Marlborough . . . and Shrews- bury are arranging for a limited intake of boys from state primary schools.' These schemes are valuable but to describe them as 'pilot' schemes is both wrong factually and conveys the impression that this is the first time the independent boarding schools 'have tried to co-operate with the state system of education.
From 1941 onwards the governors of Mill Hill were concerned about the relations between indepen- dent schools and the state system. Following the Fleming Report and while the 1944 Act was being discussed they began negotiations with the Middlesex County Council for a scheme of co-operation. Such a scheme was approved in March 1945 and has been in operation ever since. The school's numbers are stabilised at about 425 and the average number of boys who have come to us under the scheme has been twenty a year. This produces about 25 per cent of the school's numbers; last year there were 103 boys at Mill Hill elected under the scheme.
The scheme has been an unqualified success and is now an integral part of the lifc of the school. Boys have come to us at about thirteen years of age from grammar, secondary modern and com- prehensive schools, and we find they lit well into the life of this boarding school. No greater pro- portion of difficult boys comes from this source than from any other, and as great a proportion are very successful. During the past four years, for example, 46 per cent of this entry have gained university places. Many have become Monitors and several have become heads of school.
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