2 letters: Teachers know best!

Having spent most of my 40+ years of teaching in Knowsley, I read with horror that the area "is to be turned into a laboratory" of educational experiment once more (G2, Knowsley now has no A-level teaching at all, 30/01/17). The idea that politicians in London think they have a solution to the undoubted problems that exist in Knowsley is laughable, and compounded by the fact that their "solution" is "a new grammar school in the borough".

       As Ian Cobain says, Knowsley has been the object of sufficient experimentation this century already, when teachers` protests were ignored, and "wacky warehouses" the result, so using the borough again to test another shot-in-the-dark method of improving the national problem of low white working-class attainment, is simply appalling. Dare one ask what would happen to the pupils not selected for the grammar school, or from which schools the grammar`s teachers would come?

      Cobain`s report omitted the fact that Knowsley`s education has not always been quite so error-strewn, and when heads and teachers were acknowledged to know what was best, results did improve; even with many of the GCSE high-achievers leaving for 6th form education elsewhere, some schools continued to send students to universities, including Oxbridge. The lesson is clear: leave the teaching and organisation to the professionals. Ignore Gove`s nonsense about shunning "experts", and listen to people like the two heads interviewed in the article, Walker and Gowan, who have the experience and expertise to give Knowsley`s children the education they deserve.

If George Osborne seriously wants to narrow the "growing north-south divide in England`s schools", he needs to learn from Knowsley`s recent experience (Osborne seeks action on brain drain from the north,03/02/17). By all means increase the funding for the schools in the north, especially those in the most deprived areas, but most definitely do not leave important decision-making about organisation, and types of schools, to politicians.

      The idea that politicians in London think they have a solution to the undoubted problems that exist in some of the north`s schools is laughable, especially when their "solution" for Knowsley was, first, the "Building Schools for the Future", which led to the "wacky warehouses", and now, apparently, is "a new grammar school in the borough" (G2, Knowsley now has no A-level teaching at all, 30/01/17).       

          The lesson is clear: leave the teaching and organisation to the professionals. Ignore Gove`s nonsense about shunning "experts", and listen to people like the two heads interviewed in Cobain`s article, Walker and Gowan, who have the experience and expertise to give Knowsley`s children the education they deserve.