Vital role of education in bringing hope to communities

THANK you for Tom Richmond’s perceptive, incisive and thoughtful article (Yorkshire Post, October 15).

I was a teacher for 36 years, 19 of which as head of a secondary modern school. My leadership style was very similar to Jonny Mitchell’s; I focused all my energy on the front line with staff and pupils, often trying to mitigate the unintended (I hope!) consequences of ill-judged reforms and initiatives endlessly issuing from politicians and “experts”.

We were under constant scrutiny by Ofsted with its ever-shifting goalposts, although to be fair they wrote very nice things about me.

Last week’s episode of Educating Yorkshire was too  close for comfort, exposing  the cost to the committed. I  really hope Michael Steer survives: I have seen too many go under.

Tom Richmond’s article was the most illuminating and realistic piece of journalism I can remember on the vital role of education in bringing hope to communities that some would write off.

Many will be deeply grateful.

The writer of the recent piece in The Economist certainly did himself no favours in his Look North interview in Hull the other night.

I only hope that David Cameron has taken out a subscription to the Yorkshire Post following his recent visit, and circulates this piece widely among those who most need to read it!

From: Roy Bedford, Manor Rise, Walton, Wakefield.

WE knew them as the Three Rs and we jolly well learned them. I went to school in 1942, when our parents were very poor because of the war. But did it affect our education? No!

I learned how to read before I went to school, and was able to write a good letter when I was three. At the age of six, we sat in rows facing the teacher until we knew our tables. We could do long division and logarithms by the time we were ten.

Needless to say, the whole class achieved top marks when we left junior school, and have never looked back since.

I think some of our contemporary policy-makers would do well to look at the  way it was in the 1940s, when teaching was simple, direct  and effective. And some of today’s parents could also  take note.