IN Easington, in County Durham, there were five or fewer, and the number was only slightly higher in Middlesbrough (7), South Sunderland (9) and Redcar (11).Now those lowly figures are at the centre of the latest Coalition bust-up between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, which broke out into the open this week.

The statistics refer to the number of young people, from each parliamentary constituency, who applied to study at the great universities of Oxford and Cambridge last year.

A stark North-South divide was revealed, with the seat of Easington bringing up the rear. Applications were so low that officials refused to reveal the actual number, recording it as “five or fewer”. At the other end of the scale, several hundred applications came from leafy parts of the South such as Oxford West and Abingdon (232), Richmond Park (230) and Cambridge (208).

This divide was predictable, but that made it no less shocking. Remember, the top jobs in law, politics, business, medicine, academia and the media are grabbed by Oxbridge graduates.

Oxford’s response was uncompromising.

Pointing to poorer school results in Easington, it said: “With so few people achieving at the level required for Oxford, it’s not surprising there are so few applicants.”

This, of course, gets to the heart of the issue. Are A-level results of equal value everywhere, or does poverty in County Durham make good scores there a much greater achievement than straight As in rich Richmond Park? And, if the answer is yes, shouldn’t Oxbridge offer more places to young people from poorer backgrounds, regardless of raw exam results, and, therefore, inspire more applications?

That’s where this week’s Coalition clash comes in, because the new “university access tsar” is a strong supporter of opening doors.

Professor Les Ebdon, appointed by Vince Cable, the Lib Dem Business Secretary, has vowed to prevent universities from charging the maximum £9,000-a-year student fees if they fail to act.

Now, it is impossible to exaggerate how spitting mad this makes many Conservatives, who protested long and hard, but to no avail, about the disgrace of “social engineering”.

The fear, of course, is that any influx of students from unlikely parts of the country will slam the door on many from homes that almost take a place at Oxbridge for granted. One right-wing newspaper ran a piece on Mr Ebdon under the headline: “Will This Man Stop Your Child Going To A Top University?”

These tensions can only grow when Alan Milburn, the former Labour cabinet minister and David Cameron’s social mobility adviser, makes proposals very soon.

The ex-Darlington MP is likely to tell universities to look beyond simple A-level scores for true potential, offering more chances to the brightest in Easington, perhaps, but provoking fury on the Tory benches.

NO fewer than 20 current MPs attended the same school – Eton, natch – and one tenth of the crop were educated at just 13 schools, 12 of them fee-paying.

That set me thinking about which North- East school had the proudest record and it appears to be St Leonards Comprehensive, in Durham City. Pat Glass, Labour MP for Durham North West, was taught there as was, on the other side of the Commons, Treasury minister Mark Hoban.