Universities under fire over social engineering

Growing anger over UK universities' policy of providing places to students with the highest grades has led to calls for the discriminatory policy to be shelved in a bid to achieve a healthier social mix in the country's educational establishments, we can reveal.

Furious parents up and down the country, but mostly up, have called on the government to better provide for their kids since they have failed miserably.

One mother who saw her state-educated daughter miss out on the chance of a university place because a boy from a fee-paying school scored higher results was indignant: "This makes a mockery of the idea of selection on merit," she argued.

She is going to court over the issue and it threatens to become a test case as, unusually, the boy in question's headmaster has admitted that without the greatly improved teaching facilities at his school, the boy would not have achieved the four "A" grades he finally managed.

"I would say that were he educated at a state school, he would have achieved at best one 'A' and two 'B's," Reginald Pomp told reporters.

This is little consolation however to the hundreds of parents across the country who have seen their kids' dreams smashed due to not achieving high enough grades. "What can we do?" said one bursar who wished to remain anonymous. "According to the current system, if the applicant has a certain quota of points they get priority."

It is a sad tale heard over and over again.

The worst abusers of this system, we can reveal, are middle-class parents. After a few years at private school, experts predict that children are up to 10 per cent more likely to do well in exams. This misleading bias in our education system may also has the disconcerting effect of making already smug people even more intolerably self-satisfied, researchers have warned.

Investigations by The Rockall Times have also revealed a shocking "reserved places" scheme for those middle-class students that show a propensity for unthinking right-wing politics.

The Daily Mail defended its actions, with its editor arguing he is acting as a social reformer within the UK. "Yes I want to change society, but for the better," he told us. "A quota system for admissions to higher education allows for a greater diversity of middle-class children: the not-so-bright as well as the bright. And, of course, it'll root out all the blacks."