The Conservatives are considering American-style intelligence tests for students, according to the party's education spokesman.

Tim Collins told ePolitix.com that the Tories are looking to import US SAT tests for school leavers in a bid to improve equality of access to university.

With a political row flaring over government plans for an Office of Fair Access, which will oversee student admissions, the Conservative Party is keen to avoid charges of elitism in its higher education policy.

The opposition is firmly set against Labour's Higher Education Bill, which would legislate for the access regulator if passed.

The Conservatives have also called for the target of 50 per cent of young people going to university by 2010 to be scrapped.

However in an interview with this website Collins says he wants to achieve access based on academic merit and suggests that SATs could be one way of achieving this.

The tests are designed to assess natural intelligence and suitability for college courses rather than being skewed by the quality of school teaching in the way that A Levels are.

And the shadow education secretary says there is considerable evidence to support the introduction of the system in Britain.

"The advantages of the SATs as far as the American experience is, is that first of all they don't seem to have the same sort of debate that we have in this country about whether exam standards are being watered down or not," he says.

"There is a general acceptance in the United States that those tests over the last 30 years are as objective now as they were 30 years ago.

"There seems to be a much greater correlation between performance in the SATs and subsequent academic performance in the tertiary sector than is now regarded as being the case, at least by some universities, with at least some A Levels.

"And the third advantage of the SATs system is that it is generally felt that... [they] are a fair assessment, independent of socio-economic background."

The Conservative spokesman added that some sections of the UK education sector have yet to be convinced of the tests' merits.

But he insisted that he will continue to pursue the idea.

"I do recognise the fact that a number of people within the UK education system have said to me that there are some drawbacks with them," he says.

"They are felt not to be necessarily applicable on this side of the Atlantic. There are differences of opinion within the universities and between the universities as to whether the SATs are better or not.

"And therefore the short answer is that we are intrigued by it, we are looking at it but we have yet to reach final conclusions."

Collins also defends his party's opposition to the government's plans for variable university top-up fees as "principled".

"I think it is entirely principled because it is a bit odd for the party which is sticking to its manifesto pledge - which is us - to be accused of being unprincipled when the party which is breaking its manifesto pledge - the government - is supposedly being given credit for being principled," he says.

"I think that would be a fairly perverse interpretation of reality."

And he insists that the new opposition frontbench arrangements, in which he has been demoted from the Shadow Cabinet, are working well.

"I think it is enabling us to look at the cross-cutting issues in which there are several in the health and education field," he says.

"It is enabling us to make sure that the dozen people or so who are within the Shadow Cabinet are getting that rather higher media profile, which is desirable.

"It was always very difficult when you had a very large Shadow Cabinet as we had under the previous leader when there were 30 of us, it was actually very difficult for any of us to get much of a media profile and therefore there is sense in slimming that down."