Letters
Oxbridge's blunt instrument
Sir: Writing from his 'official address' — to quote Paul Johnson — John Casey ('Attacking scholarship', 19 November) might have given us the benefit of some in- side knowledge to support his opinion that Oxford and Cambridge entrance scholar- ship examinations are any less of a 'blunt instrument' than he claims 'A' Levels to be. In the absence of any correlations between performance in entrance and final examina- tions (the only possible test, even though it too supposes a 'sharpness' in the latter which is also unproven), one is forced to fall back on the necessarily selective samples of one's own experience. 1 myself went up to Emmanuel College, Cambridge as one of eleven freshmen reading Modern Languages. Of these, two had entrance scholarships, seven were exhibitioners, and two had no award. In Part I of the Tripos, only four of the eleven achieved an upper second in both languages. Neither of the scholars was among them, and the only first was gained by a man with no award (who has since progressed to positions of respon- sibility both in the Faculty and in John Casey's own college). Such evidence as I have, then, leads me to believe that the en- trance award system is also a fairly blunt in- strument. There is no doubt that it is time- consuming to administer. Moreover, it is also pernicious, in that it it encourages an absurdly short-term 'over-breeding' of selected pupils by schoolteachers for whom an entrance award is the supreme goal of existence.
While one might sympathise with some of John Casey's opinions on wider matters, the entrance award system is, I think, hard- ly a strong rampart on which to defend the principle of excellence.
Michael Scuff!
Quettinger Str. 35, 5090 Leverkusen 3, W. Germany
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