I NOTE with interest the debate on access to medical schools ("Quarter of all medical students are privately educated", The Herald, May 26).

David Crawford writes an interesting letter on this topic (May 27), and then undermines his argument with his closing sentence: "The day we find old boys from Glenalmond and Gordonstoun working the tills at Lidl we will have solved the prob¬lem."

This is the key difference between him and those of us who yearn for wider access in a more positive sense - my closing line would be: "The day we find more former pupils of both genders from schools like Govan and Pollok becoming medical consultants, running major companies or succeeding as international entrepreneurs (and there are many of those already) we will have solved the problem."

Mr Crawford's solution is to bring everyone down to the lowest level - mine is to help them climb up. Better for the individual, and much better for the country.

Richard Hunter,

Drumore Road, Killearn.

DAVID Crawford highlights the point that it is wealth which is everything and it is wealth which accounts for the over representation of one group in the number of people accepted as medical students.

If an attempt is made to reduce the number of students accepted for medicine from private schools this will not necessarily strike at the root of the problem. I am already aware of the fact that a number of people who can afford to send their children to private schools do not do so and if there is a bias towards accepting more students from the state sector then you can be assured that a significant number of those with wealth will quickly abandon private education in favour of the state schools.

Similarly the problem will not necessarily be solved when we find old boys from Glenalmond and Gordonstoun working the tills at Lidl. That could happen when a career in retail management is seen as a good option for those with wealth and has lost its unjustified stigma of being a job beneath an individual's status.

Sandy Gemmill,

40 Warriston Gardens, Edinburgh.

THE all-party parliamentary group's Character and Resilience Manifesto makes a clear connection between the development of character and perseverance with social mobility.

In the 1950s a Scottish state senior secondary would emphasis self-control, curiosity, tenacity and the need to try difficult things to develop self-esteem and self-confidence.

I was a miner's son sent out by Falkirk High School to compete like a gladiator in the university bursary competitions with the products of both state and public schools.

The idea that I needed "positive discrimination" to enter an elite university or protection from public schools in an academic competition would have been both insulting and risible.

If anything, it was the public schoolboys who needed "academic protection" from working-class science duxes like me emerging from the state senior secondaries.

Dr John Cameron,

10 Howard Place,

St Andrews.