All they are doing is being strictly impartial and recognising that kids at inner-city comprehensives

All they are doing is being strictly impartial and recognising that kids at inner-city comprehensives inevitably have a poorer education than those who go to private schools."Professor Newby, CVCP president, pooh-poohs the idea that universities are doing anything very new or unusual, pointing out that they have never admitted students by some formula restricted to A-level grades but have always taken into account other factors "Universities have always been flexible," he says. "A-level grades are important in admissions but they are only one element and are used in combination with other things."Everyone is in favour of less drastic forms of positive discrimination, including summer schools for disadvantaged teenagers, and universities developing links with schools which have not traditionally fed students to them.Mr Blunkett is expected to develop this theme today in his speech. Senior government sources said he was adamant that entry grades should not be relaxed in the name of access. Instead he believes the leading universities (apart from Oxford and Cambridge which have been busting their guts) should do more to encourage applications from bright comprehensive school pupils.In his speech, Mr Blunkett is likely to cite all the money that the universities have been given for access and ask them what they have to show for it. Labour politicians believe - with some justification - that the top universities have been complacent about the matter until recently.Such access programmes are important. But they may not be able to tackle the real issue - the low numbers of poorer people choosing to go to university at all. There is a problem with demand for higher education in the United Kingdom.

University places are going begging.That is why some experts wonder whether you can do much about access. "I really don't see where the new access students are going to come from," says Professor Gareth Williams, of London's Institute of Education. "I would rather see more money going into further education so that more people can become plumbers.". There are no moral absolutes in the case of the conjoined twins known as Jodie and Mary - now six weeks old - on whose fate the Court of Appeal ponders this week. There are three approaches, each of which could be deemed to be absolute. There is the utilitarian calculation that assumes that the survival of the stronger child at the expense of the weaker is morally a better outcome than the death of both, which is the certain result of the failure to intervene medically.

That was the judgment of the lower court and, given the strongly utilitarian tradition of English law, is likely to be the ruling of the Court of Appeal next week. There are no moral absolutes in the case of the conjoined twins known as Jodie and Mary - now six weeks old - on whose fate the Court of Appeal ponders this week. There are three approaches, each of which could be deemed to be absolute. There is the utilitarian calculation that assumes that the survival of the stronger child at the expense of the weaker is morally a better outcome than the death of both, which is the certain result of the failure to intervene medically.

That was the judgment of the lower court and, given the strongly utilitarian tradition of English law, is likely to be the ruling of the Court of Appeal next week. But there are two other possible absolutes The first is the right to life. If that right is absolute, then it must be upheld for the weaker child as much as for the stronger. On that basis, no one can have the right to decide on the weaker child's behalf that she would choose - if she were competent to decide - to curtail even her short and ailing life for the sake of her sister's survival.The second is the right of parents to decide their children's future. Some have attempted to dismiss the parents' assertion of that right by describing it as stemming from their "deeply held religious beliefs", used here as a euphemism for irrationality and obscurantism. But there is a perfectly rational argument for saying that it is parents who are in the best position to judge what is in the best interests of their own children.Of course, the truth is that all three of those approaches should be balanced in the circumstances of any particular case - and especially in this difficult case. The utilitarian calculation cannot be absolute, because it involves the deliberate taking of another life.

The right to life cannot be absolute, because all but the most zealous pro-lifer would accept that abortion is the lesser evil in situations where there is a threat to a mother's life, or where a foetus would go to term with some fatal disability.And the parents' right to decide cannot be absolute, because the state has justifiable grounds to intervene in cases such as when Jehovah's Witnesses refuse routine medical treatment for life-threatening conditions.In the end it is with the parents that this agonising decision best belongs. In considering the best interests of the children, the parents have had in mind both the needs of the weaker twin - who will die as soon as she is separated - and the stronger twin, who, if she survives, will be doomed to a life of disability. Some have criticised the children's parents for saying they do not want to bring up a disabled child because of the attitudes toward disability of their relatively poor Mediterranean island society (although it's not as if disabled children are particularly well treated in Britain). But the point is that the burden of bringing up a severely disabled child is not necessarily one that the courts have the right to impose on unwilling parents.But there is a more powerful point. It should not be the role of the courts to force these unhappy parents into choosing to kill one of their babies in order that the other should survive.