The academies policy is unwise, perverse and centralising

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2016/apr/03/letters-academies-schools

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English primary schools have long been regarded as one of the great achievements of English education. Close to their communities, cherished by parents and grandparents, and almost invariably enjoyed and inspired by their young pupils, no wonder four fifths of them are regarded by the school inspectors as outstanding or good (“Academy schools plan faces cross-party opposition as council chiefs’ anger grows”, News).

The support of parents, many actively involved as volunteers, governors and organisers of school events, is crucial. There is a great deal of evidence to how vital the involvement of parents and grandparents is to children’s academic and social standards.

So it is perverse to drop parent governors from the governing bodies of schools, as it is perverse to abolish almost all the links with local authorities, greatly adding to their financial difficulties by forcing many to buy in to expensive private advice on legal and accounting issues.

Local communities and their schools are the bedrock of citizenship. At a time of instability and change, families need to be able to rely on their teachers and their schools.

Good primary teachers are greatly valued by head teachers and by parents, but they are getting harder and harder to recruit and to retain. One reason is the massive amount of data that has to be kept, the detailed oversight and the frequent assessment which is making teaching a bureaucratic rather than an educational job.

The acute shortage of experienced teachers, especially in the crucial stem subjects, tells the story better than any ministerial propaganda.

Like my veteran colleague David Blunkett, I believe there is widespread horror among teachers and increasingly among parents as well, and in all parties in local government, about this destructive policy.

I hope the teaching unions will seek to mobilise support among these groups rather than calling a strike which will make life difficult for many working parents. Better to persuade them to lobby their own local MPs to vote against this unwise, insensitive and centralising policy. It will put primary schools under the diktat of the academy chains with no accountability to anyone other than their own governors chosen by themselves.Shirley WilliamsBishop’s StortfordHerts

‘Every Irishman’? Far from it

I’m not sure if it’s best to be ignored or to be completely airbrushed from history. In Ed Vulliamy’s article on the Easter Rising he states emphatically that “… every Irishman … knows in their heart that their country was reborn with the Easter Rising” (New Review). Every Irishman? As someone who was born in Ireland, just outside Belfast, I know nothing of the sort. The Easter Rising means nothing to me – just as the views of my Irish forebears meant nothing to Patrick Pearse and his fellow revolutionaries.

Pearse, in the second paragraph of the proclamation read from the steps of the GPO, highlights the support they had from their European allies.

These allies were the Germans. In 1916 these allies of Pearse were responsible for the death of my Irish grandfather.

If Ed Vulliamy had said “many” Irishman, in his article, it would have been impossible to find fault with the conclusion. But by saying “every” he reveals an underlying assumption. Unionists, and all those who don’t subscribe to the dominant narrative, are not worthy of consideration.John SmythSwindonWiltshire

Let the bishop have his say

I was a little surprised, in your piece about the bishop of St Albans’s contribution to the EU debate, to see it described as an “intervention”, as if it were something that should not concern him (“Anglican bishop gives backing to Remain camp, praising EU’s peacekeeping role”, News).

The bishop is a British citizen, and has as much right as anyone else in this country to make a public declaration of his opinion.

The fact that he is a Christian leader is neither here nor there, except for the fact that it makes the point that the Christian faith is concerned with the whole of human life, not just those bits of it which people label “religious”.

It surprises me somewhat less that the National Secular Society should seek to deny the bishop that freedom of expression which it claims for itself. It makes the sniffy remark that “senior church figures should not comment on political issues”, quoting the spurious notion that church and state are to be kept separate.

Not only is that idea demonstrably not true as far as England is concerned (the said bishop’s appointment, like that of every Church of England bishop, having been announced from the prime minister’s office); it is also a denial of a basic freedom enjoyed by all of us. 

John WilliamsChichesterWest Sussex

Entranced by his pants

I feel that Rhys Ifans’s Y-fronts in the doorstep scene in Notting Hill were a great omission from Michael Hogan’s feature on iconic underwear (New Review, last week).Chris BowdenNorthwichCheshire