OXFORD dons have been ordered to make interviews easier in order to give state pupils a better chance of winning a place at the university.
Under new guidelines, dons will be banned from 'sitting on a chair which is higher than the interviewee', coming across as 'cold and detached' or 'assuming too much knowledge on the part of the candidate'. Such interview techniques are thought to disadvantage state pupils because they are less poised and less likely to have been coached for interviews.
The edicts have been drawn up to meet Government concerns that the university admits too many privileged students. A private school head last night described the advice as 'horrendously misguided'.
Dons have also been told to avoid giving religious offence such as shaking hands with a Muslim girl who has not offered her hand first - and told how to dodge legal action from rejects.
The guidelines, issued to academics training as admissions tutors, were disclosed ahead of this week's A-level results. With experts predicting the pass rate will rise for the 16th year and the proportion of A grades could reach one in four for the first time, there is likely to be a stampede for top university places.
Generations have quaked at stories of rude dons conducting interviews from baths or asking questions such as 'Do worms think?' or 'Tell me about a banana.'
The Government has told Oxford and Cambridge to aim to reduce the private pupils they admit from 43 per cent to under 25 per cent by 2009. Both are trying to do this by building relationships with poor comprehensives. A trainee admissions tutor said: 'We have been told we mustn't throw candidates off balance by starting with a hard question. We shouldn't be "cold and detached" or intimidating, which means not using the old trick of sitting them on a battered old sofa, low on the ground, which flings their legs in the air and leaves them peering up at the interviewer.'
'We have been told we should talk about what they know, not what they don't. It is thought that otherwise pupils from the state sector are unfairly disadvantaged by their lack of extra teaching." Interviews are expected to be conducted by two dons, including a woman in the case of Muslim girls.
The tutor added: 'If I wanted my child to go to Oxford I would send him to either a good state school, so he got credit for "overcoming disadvantage", or somewhere like Eton or Westminster, where he is guaranteed a gold-standard education.'
Martin Stephen, High Master of private St Paul's School in West London, called the guidance 'horrendously misguided and patronising'. He added: 'The point of starting an interview with a difficult question is to knock over-prepared, overcoached candidates off their perch and get to the real ability underneath,' he said.
An Oxford University spokeswoman last night said the admissions guidelines were designed to make the interview fairer.
* School-leavers are 'ignorant, illiterate, innumerate, socially inept and totally unprepared for the world of work', reveals a survey of 4,000 members of the Forum of Private Business lobby group. They added that exams have become less demanding.