Attlee’s achievements cannot be compared to Cameron’s

Bernard Ingham, in his article (Yorkshire Post April 18), valiantly defends David Cameron’s “vision” regarding the NHS, education and the Big Society. He also promotes Clement Attlee’s post-war government that “performed miracles in maintaining low inflationary full employment for decades”.

Though both were public schoolboys who became Oxford graduates, Attlee gave up a legal career to work with poor families in the East End of London. He volunteered for the First World war, serving in Gallipoli, Iraq, and the Western Front.

He then went back to social work and politics, became an MP and during the Second World War ran the War Cabinet in Churchill’s absence.

By comparison, our current Prime Minister had a spell as a PR man for Carlton Television before entering politics, never having served in government before becoming Prime Minister. Is it any wonder that this Government is out of touch with ordinary people?

Bernard Ingham mentions the 66 per cent of GDP debt (up by two per cent since they came to power) that this government is grappling with at the present time. Yet Attlee had far higher levels of debt to contend with, in a nation devastated by bombing and six years of deferred maintenance.

Did Attlee cut like Osborne has done? No, he invested, borrowed money under Keynes’s system of economics, to put people back to work and use their tax revenues to revitalise the national economy. Those who could afford to pay higher tax, did so.

At the same time he set up the NHS, a national planning policy, and a “safety-net” welfare policy, all achievements this government is desperately trying to unravel.

Charities, a major plank of Cameron’s “Big Society” are to be taxed too, yet the rich, who alone can afford higher taxes, get a tax cut! We’re all in this together?

From: Ros McMullen, Principal, David Young Community Academy, Bishops Way, Seacroft, Leeds.

I NOTICED that the Government was calling for universities to be more involved in running A-levels. Here at the David Young Community Academy in Leeds, we believe that A-levels on their own have for some time been an inadequate preparation for the rigours of proper academic study at university.

A-level teaching, combined with the structure of assessment, seems to us to be merely teaching young people how to pass examinations and this is not what education is about.

In order for students to be adequately prepared for study at the highest academic level in our best universities, they need a sixth-form education which is about thinking critically and creatively. Our sixth-form therefore offers the International Baccalaureate.

This instils in its students a capacity for inquiry, research and problem-solving that ideally prepares them for the demands of degree-level study. The extended essay, for example, familiarises students with the independent research and writing skills expected by university admissions officers.

Evidence suggests as a result that IB students perform better at university, with official figures showing that a higher percentage of IB students achieve a first class honours degree compared with students holding A-levels of equivalent qualifications (19 per cent versus 14.5 per cent – HESA 2011), and that drop-out rates are lower among IB students.

Since it was founded, the IB has been committed to working closely with universities. As part of the curriculum development process, universities from the UK and around the world are consulted as subject experts and invited to critique the subject guides.

The overwhelming majority of the IB’s chief examiners are also recruited from universities. Chief examiners are responsible for the academic rigour and continuity of standards of IB Diploma courses.

As a testament to the quality of IB graduates, Birmingham University has announced that it will establish a University School and Sixth Form which offers the IB Diploma Programme as an option. Staff and students at the David Young Community Academy are enjoying the intellectual stimulation of the IB, and we are convinced that for the most academically able this provides the best preparation for university.