Milburn on Class Division within Higher Education

Class division within education; a killing joke, possibly. Yet Alan Milburn, whom we understand has the ear of Lord Mandelson has decreed that when it comes to admissions policy, the leading universities will choose public school candidates over state school ones. The reasoning? Public school candidates apparently have more rounded curriculum vitae and have done a range of stuff outside the classroom including having been in the school cadet force, etc, etc. Although what any child is supposed to have achieved at the age of 18 or 19, heaven alone knows. What could any child put on their cvs at that age:-

A Levels?
Dont know?

And the fact that we are even thinking of dividing up pupils by their curriculum vitae at the age of 19 or 18 beggars belief. No child of that age will have done anything, so how they can say that public school pupils are better than state school pupils on that basis, I will never know.

Unless the little chaps and chapesses have been some sort of Mozart character, a prodigy at the age of 6, I guess we can pretty much forget about it; a more specious argument for barring decent state school pupils from the top universities has yet to be seen but I daresay that there is such an argument around, even if it dare not so far speak its name.