I write in response to Lucinda Moule’s comment entitled ‘Wrong targets’. I agree that there needs to be more opportunities given to children attending comprehensive schools. However, I do not believe creating more selective schools is the answer. This may be the answer for law firms, but not for the children who fail to get into a selective school.

This will create a generation of children who, at the age of 11, are immediately stigmatised and told they will amount to nothing, and it would essentially be a return to the inequalities that existed when the 11+ was part of our educational system.

Young people need to be given ambition and the belief that they can achieve anything they want to achieve if they work hard enough. The problem is in the mindset of the existing elitist legal industry where the assumption is that if you did not go to the ‘right’ school or university then you are not as able.

At least with quotas and targets it would force employers to take on people who do not fit the usual stereotype and they may find, by giving such people an opportunity that they would otherwise not have had, they excel in their field.

Liz Taylor, Dickinson Parker Hill, Ormskirk, Lancashire