REGARDING Geoff Robb’s letter (The Press, December 5), I’m sure you’ll get plenty of replies, but just in case...

One fact to clarify - universities don’t have selection examinations, except for Oxford and Cambridge.

At 18 you can take A-levels. If you fail or mess up, you can take them again. You can even take them in one of our dwindling evening classes.

You can wait, work a while, apply to university with experience. You can take other examinations to show your worth.

Universities try to be flexible in how the select. Some people even go to university in their sixties.

At 11 you can take an exam and fail and that’s it, no grammar school for you. And if you send the “cream” to a grammar then what is the neighbouring comprehensive? Is it for all or for the people deemed to have failed at 11?

I am the product of a grammar in Kent, and I’m proud of my school. But I still feel that to judge children at 11 is a severe mistake and it is a retrograde step to return to that.

Lastly - we have free schools, academies, local comprehensives; do we need to fragment our education system further into a chaotic, disreputable mess for which our Education Secretary seems to have no responsibility?

Clive Tiney, Towthorpe Road, Haxby, York