Nadhim Zahawi is the latest in a long line of hypocritical Tory education secretaries who urge state schools to “do better” while denying them the necessary resources (Editorial, 16 May). To add insult to injury, he implies, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that state-educated students who overcome difficult personal circumstances in gaining admission to prestigious universities are examples of “tilting the system” and have not been selected on merit.
In fact, admitting students on merit is one of the areas in which Oxford and Cambridge universities have shown marked improvement in recent years, which explains why the proportion of students admitted from state schools is much greater than it used to be.
