The Tories have failed to protect the education system - Yorkshire Post Letters

Your article about the lack of pupils taking a GCSE in languages illustrates one of the policies of the unpopular former education secretary Michael Gove, who introduced the EBacc primarily to increase the uptake of languages, which 13 years on it has singularly failed to do.

My own 15 year teaching career came to an end as a result of the despair I felt at the punitive and nonsensical decisions made by Gove and his department.

Many of these decisions are now coming home to roost, for example cancelling the Building Schools for the Future programme, described by Gove himself as his ‘biggest mistake’. The objective of the BSF programme was to rebuild or refurbish every secondary school in the country over a period of 20 years.

Had the programme been allowed to continue, most schools would by this time have been at least refurbished. Instead we have a school building stock which is decaying, end of life and in many cases dangerous, as reported elsewhere in the press.

This failure to invest has been a thread that has run throughout the Tories time in power and it has led to a gradual and recently a sudden deterioration in all our vital public services. I hope the consequences of a Tory government is not lost on your readers.