The Vice Chancellor of Oxford University, Professor Louise Richardson, has rejected a key recommendation contained in the government's green paper "Schools that work for everyone".

The green paper includes a recommendation that universities that want to charge higher tuition fees should be required to build a new free school or sponsor a state-run academy.

Speaking on this morning's Today programme on BBC Radio 4, Professor Richardson said that running schools would be a "distraction", despite the fact that sponsorship of schools by other universities (for instance, the sponsorship of a maths. school by King's College in London) is widely acknowledged as having been very successful.

Her comments came on the day that Oxford University displaced California Institute of Technology at the number one position in the World University Rankings produced by Times Higher Education.

Professor Richardson added that her university already had "extensive relationships" with schools and was "deeply involved in the community". But she said that having to run a local feeder school would be "a distraction from our core mission".

The Green Paper also proposes that existing grammar schools should be allowed to expand, new grammar schools should be opened and existing comprehensives should be allowed to run on a selective basis.

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