ONE of the North-East's flagship universities has hit back at accusations that it is failing to recruit enough students from poorer backgrounds.

Durham University was one of 17 institutions identified by the Government's Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) for failing to be sufficiently 'socially inclusive'.

Those identified could now face financial penalties as a result.

The figures showed just over 15 per cent of students admitted to Durham were from disadvantaged groups, while in almost a third of the intake were from independent schools.

Newcastle was also singled out for its high proportion of independent school pupils, running at more than 26 per cent.

But a Durham University spokesman said the figures, based on the 2002-3 academic year, did not reflect progress made to attract more people from state schools and non-traditional backgrounds.

He said: "We are seeing a continuing rise in state schools applications and admissions which reflects the university's targeted recruitment work."

Lesley Braiden, director of recruitment at Newcastle University said: "We have made good progress towards our benchmarks, or targets, for widening participation in the UK as a whole and have exceeded them within the North-East region where we have been concentrating our efforts."

Meanwhile the HESA performance figures identified Sunderland University as being admirably 'working class' in its student recruitment. But the university did less well when it came to completion rates for its courses with more than a third of students dropping out before their graduation.

Elsewhere, 94.1 per cent of students at Durham completed their degrees, 87.8 per cent at Newcastle and 79.2 per cent at Northumbria University.

At York University some 89.9 per cent of students enrolling on a degree course completed it.

No figure was available for Teesside University.