LIKE a previous writer, I too, must join issue with you over your Comments; this time regarding the activities of Education Secretary David Blunkett (LET, March 1).

It never ceases to surprise me how many people have decided views on education and teachers.

This, despite the fact that they have never been involved in the educational process, except as students, and have never taught professionally in their lives.

With all due respect to him, Mr Blunkett must rely on advisers or 'spinners' from the Millbank Kremlin, or from some other group of advisers with which New Labour abounds. These people have become obsessed with targets in a number of different fields and while their ideas may sound good in theory, they are either seriously flawed and inoperable in practice. Compare Mr Blunkett's efforts:

1. National attainment levels. All classes are different: all schools are different: there is no common yardstick of attainment.

2. The same thing applies to performance-related pay. This is a ridiculous idea. There is absolutely no basic standard by which a teacher can be assessed. Not only would it become a bureaucratic nightmare, but it is divisive.

3. Mentors. Problem children and children with problems are to have their own counsellor. This is again a playing-to-the-gallery ploy.

4. His demands for five GCSE passes at C level or above is again pie-in-the-sky propaganda, as is his super headmaster idea. We need strong heads who are allowed by the education authorities to do their job.

On your overt criticism of teachers; of course there are teachers of varying competence, which is something that applies in all positions and professions. The main obstacle preventing even good teachers from teaching to the best of their ability is the poor attitude and bad behaviour of students, for which a teacher has no effective counter.

This, of course, is symptomatic of the permissive society in which we live, which attitude was engendered by the do-gooders, the sociologists, the so-called liberal thinkers, etc.

If teachers are to be allowed to teach, instead of being day child minders, disruptive and rude students should be adequately dealt with at all levels within an existing framework.

R BRACEWELL (Mr), Ormerod Street, Worsthorne, Burnley.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.