Top universities have to choose between excellent candidates

The president of the Girls' Schools Association, Pauline Davies, said it was wrong to accept pupils just for doing better than average for their school.

It would encourage parents to send children to bad schools to be sure of a university place, she said - a "counsel of despair".

Private schools called a boycott on Bristol University last spring over the policy.

'Impossible'

Mrs Davies, as well as being the GSA's president and head of Wycombe Abbey school in Buckinghamshire, is a member of the government task force devising a fair university admissions policy.

Are we, as a country, really going to say to bright teenagers and their parents that the only way they can be sure to have their university applications taken seriously is to transfer to the worst achieving school they can find? Pauline Davies

Speaking at the GSA's annual conference, at St Andrews in Fife, Mrs Davies said that because so many students now achieved three grade As at A-level, the most popular universities were devising their own tests to distinguish between them.

Or they were taking candidates on the basis of "exceptional performance in context" - beating the average for their school - which was bound to hit private school pupils, she said.

"It will be difficult, if not impossible, for many of our students to demonstrate exceptional performance in context since the pupils who attend our schools achieve such high standards.

"Of course, students at high-achieving schools and colleges in the maintained sector will be penalised, too.

"Are we, as a country, really going to say to bright teenagers and their parents that the only way they can be sure to have their university applications taken seriously is to transfer to the worst achieving school they can find?

"This is a counsel of despair so far as school improvement is concerned."

Bristol denial

She urged all concerned to work towards a system under which university applications were made after students knew their exam results - rather than as now on the basis of predicted grades.

Last week, universities themselves backed such a move.

A Bristol University spokesman denied there was any positive discrimination.

The policy to which Mrs Davies had referred had been "openly discussed in our undergraduate prospectuses for several years".

The latest version had been posted on the university's website in June, following consultations with the GSA and with the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference, the other main representative body for private schools, he said.

"It is a reiteration of the approach that has been well established at Bristol for years and is also followed by other leading universities for obvious reasons.

"The objective is to look for candidates with the greatest academic ability, potential and motivation.

"One of the many possible indicators of these qualities is outstanding success against the odds."