WHEN it comes to state-school education, I’m afraid that Oxford has one huge problem. A very brilliant and clever problem, and it’s called Oxford University.

Its very presence distorts its neighbourhood unlike virtually any other.

Doubtless for the needs of our country and the world at large, Oxford University has to be set apart in a wonderful world of dreaming spires.

The trouble is that many, not all, of its talented academic staff are cut off from the rest of Oxford.

They send their children to some excellent private schools and live largely within their well-resourced and rather closed college communities.

The parent of a struggler at Key Stage One from Cowley is quite possibly just a college ‘servant’, never encountered in any other community.

If you are in that set-up it may be fine, but if not you may feel like a bit of an outsider, even if you live, as I do, in one of the leafier areas.

The trouble is that the outside world tends to think of Oxford in an exclusively high-flying academic context – Morse investigating murders as the college bells chime, and all that.

So, for example, some years ago Voluntary Reading Help – helping those very youngsters who are under-attaining – withdrew funding for Oxford to concentrate on areas of greater need.

We didn’t stand a chance against more obviously deprived areas and had to set up our own local network (ARCh).

So often to outsiders we’re all Gown, but we aren’t!

Surely it’s time for Gown to do Town a few more favours in terms of our local schools. After all, as a prominent MP said quite recently, ‘we’re all in this together’.

DON MANLEY, Hayward Road, Oxford