Madam, - Your reports on "feeder schools" to UCD and Trinity are continuing the pattern of the past few years. Your wilful avoidance of the obvious is on the scale of the American account of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
Students from fee-paying colleges and grind schools do not get to university because of better teachers, nor because of better facilities, nor because they are cleverer. Middle-class children will tend to get to university whether they are in these schools or not, whether they have to sit next to the "hoi polloi" or not.
In recent years Irish Times reporters have done poor service to education by implying that getting access to these reputed hothouses increases advantage. You would better serve your readers not by perpetuating myths, but by examining what it is that prevents perfectly bright students from working-class backgrounds getting into college. - Yours, etc.,
JERRY HERLIHY, Goslingstown, Kilkenny.