Too many young people are encouraged to aspire to higher education and jobs that they are not equipped for, leaving key societal roles unfilled because they are seen as second-class. Until we change our culture to one of mutual respect where we are all valued equally, whether we are a teacher or a bricklayer, a doctor or a hairdresser, or a rocket scientist or a car mechanic, then we will be unable as a country to provide the education that young people really need and that will truly lay the foundations for positive working lives.

Trust schools are not the answer. The answer lies in a courageous government truly willing to take a long-term view to promote radical change in attitudes to education and vocation, and a comprehensive overhaul of the whole education and exam system. Only then will we have young people aspiring to learn the skills we so desperately need and an education system designed to meet their, and society’s, needs.

JANE MILLER
Salisbury

Sir, The Schools Report (Jan 19) contains few surprises. Independent schools are better than girls’ grammar schools, which are better than boys’ grammar schools, and both are better than comprehensives which, in my own town at least, seem to rank, more or less, in order of the social class of the catchment area of the school in question.

It is not our schools and teachers who are failing our kids; it is the kids and their parents who are failing the schools.

HUGH WEATHERLY
Colchester, Essex

Sir, I have identified ten reasons for the present ills of the British education system. They are, in chronological order: Sir Keith Joseph, Kenneth Baker, John MacGregor, Kenneth Clarke, John Patten, Gillian Shepherd, David Blunkett, Estelle Morris, Charles Clarke and Ruth Kelly, to which can be added their misguided leaders.

Which one of these ever fostered an honest, non-gimmicky initiative designed to make it attractive to become (or remain) a teacher? From Sir Keith Joseph onwards, decisions about education have been made over experienced teachers’ heads, while the ground has been mined underneath their feet. When the history of British education over the past 30 years is written, the secretaries of state will be forgotten, and the (no doubt) government-appointed historian will blame the teachers.

BARRY PACKHAM
Stockport

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