Madam, – I cannot agree with Ross Higgins’s proposal (Opinion, August 19th) that the top 10 per cent of graduates of each secondary school be guaranteed a place in university. His intention is that parents will be provided an incentive to send their children to the less affluent schools, where they might have a better chance of being in this top percentile.
Whether or not this would promote equal access, it would certainly promote mediocrity. A bright student put in a school with historically low grades will have no chance to flourish academically, being unchallenged and unmotivated. What do we want to teach our children about the purpose of education? The proposed system would simply swap paying for better performance with strategising for better odds; in neither way are we encouraging education for its own sake. – Yours, etc,