I read that head teachers could be paid £200,000 a year to run failing schools. Is this a good use of public money?

Nick Crowhurst Cornwall

Fat-cat bureaucrats in the public sector do precious little to justify the £100,000 salaries many now earn. Head teachers with the experience and courage to transform a failing school deserve every penny we can pay them.

So, too, of course, do the teachers upon whom educational standards ultimately depend. Their salaries should be raised, too. A sensible government would sack the “school improvement partners” and the “enterprise architects” and use the money saved to reward those who really make the difference.

It’s the naive belief that a “superhead” can run two or more schools at once which worries me. Raising standards in our toughest schools is a full-time job demanding 100% concentration 18 hours a day.

My daughter is taking 11 GCSEs this year. Her school has written to me saying she will have three weeks’ study leave before the exams. I am a working mother and cannot stay at home for three weeks to be with my daughter while she revises. Do you agree that the school is right to argue that she will revise more effectively at home on study leave than at school in supervised classes?

P Etheridge East London

Students should be in school until the week their exams begin. They need to be in class, listening as their teachers reinforce difficult concepts, test misunderstandings and run through possible questions.

Instead, they spend weeks at home, wasting their time and annoying their parents. It’s a nonsense.

I read Belinda Holmes’s letter and your response with interest (Answer the Question, April 6). Her daughter is not alone. My son has five exams totalling six hours 45 minutes timetabled for one day for his GCSEs. Four of these exams, totalling five hours were timetabled for the afternoon.

Ruth Huish, Warwickshire

Thank you. One exam officer tells me that several GCSE students in his school will endure seven hours 24 minutes of exams in one day this summer. Other readers mention similar problems.

Can more be done to coordinate provision? The secretary of state needs to find out.

Chris Woodhead is a former chief inspector of schools and now chairman of the private schools group Cognita. If you have a question for him, please write to him c/o The Sunday Times, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1ST or e-mail him, with your name and address, at education-questions@sunday-times.co.uk

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