Treasury holds the key to door

Half a century ago, the Labour Party committed itself to abolishing private schools. The debate over Oxbridge selection procedures confirms the wisdom of that policy and exposes as mere rhetoric the government's commitment to socially inclusive and accessible higher education.

The Russell Group's tuition-fee proposals simply extend into higher education the private schools' strategy of securing personal advancement on the basis of social and financial privilege. A radical vision would reaffirm the redundancy of private schools and reposition Oxford and Cambridge as postgraduate-only institutions. Only then could we confidently assert that we had established the structural basis for the modern meritocratic higher education system that new Labour advocates.

R. Harris. London N1.