Academies Letter in The Guardian

Gove's theory is that competition will improve the education system, like in the US. They've experimented with magnet schools, small schools and charter schools (the model for academies). The latter have "brands" like Edison and KIPP now running schools as "chains".

There is, of course, an alternative. In Finland they have a fully comprehensive education system, private education is minimal, and schools co-operate and don't view other schools as rivals in the market for consumers (children) and stakeholders (parents).

So where has this marketisation model left the US? Underfunded, the grim legacy of testing with the No Child Left Behind Act and an education system that is chronically divided according to wealth.

Letter

Teachers' pensions

Pensions are part of the unique, unwritten contract with government that is taken on trust by teachers. When significant changes were made in 2008 we were promised they were "once in a lifetime" and the pension scheme was secure and viable. So what is to stop every government from gouging chunks out of teachers' pensions?

As for our generous, "gold-plated" pensions, we can now join our colleagues in the private sector in the race to the bottom as final-salary pensions are jettisoned (except of course for the chief executives, and there is no sign of MPs abandoning their platinum-plated pensions, courtesy of the tax-payer).

As a graduate profession, teachers are considerably under-paid when compared to law, medicine or finance. Pensions represent deferred wages and at an average of £10,000 per annum aren't exactly a king's ransom.

So now we are hit with Mr Gove's triple whammy - pay more, retire later and receive less. The danger is that NQTs facing the financial pressure of student loans, paying for housing and 9 per cent of their salary in pension contributions will just decide to opt out - who thinks of pensions when they are in their twenties? This will inevitably lead to the total collapse of the teachers' pension scheme.

After three decades of being dumped on from a great height by successive governments, being branded as total, useless incompetents by the media and hounded by Ofsted inspectors, maybe, finally, finally, the outrageous attack on our pensions will be the proverbial straw that breaks the proverbial camel's proverbial back.

TES

Public Schools

Millions badly spent

How did public schools acquire charitable status (Opinion, 10 May)? Some were established in the Middle Ages by generous benefactors, their aim not to educate the poor, but the "sons of dec'yed gentlemen". In Victorian times, case law established a highly questionable interpretation of "public benefit".

Through claiming "charitable" status public schools are able to garner millions in tax exemptions. If this tax could be reclaimed by the state it could be spent on the 93% of pupils in the state sector.

Letter in Guardian Education

History Teaching - Letter Education Guardian

After Jamie's Dream School we now have the musings of Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson (Reduced to odds and sods, 29 March). Ferguson might have mentioned primary schools, where just 4% of curriculum time is devoted to the subject. He quotes extensively from Ofsted: this is a bit like asking a serial killer to advise the homicide squad. Testing, league tables, the resultant narrowed curriculum, all of this enforced by the Ofsted inspectors. Ferguson's view of history is narrow and reductive, but despite that, some history, any history would be welcome.

Letter