LETTERS

Teachers aren’t parents

HAVING worked with young people suffering mental-health problems, including for many years in a secondary school, I am pleased the Government and society generally are waking up to this huge problem.

However, I am concerned that it is thought we can train teachers and other school staff to address these issues with young people. Many teachers I know find the subject difficult due to their own emotional issues and family histories.

We, as usual, want to put a sticking plaster over something that, instead, needs considerable investment to provide highly skilled professionals to go into schools to work with students and staff.

School staff need professionals to whom these children can be referred and they need support. Instead, we are asking schools to take on another parenting role.

Common sense should tell us that this needs to be a partnership with the most important people in these children’s lives — their families.

Too many children spend their time sitting in their bedrooms, isolated from the family on social media that is not supervised by their parents, and even take their meals in their rooms. The positives of sharing mealtimes and social activities are well-documented.

Children talk about being disconnected from their parents, often struggling with unrealistic expectations from them.

Parents, meanwhile, seem frightened to set boundaries for their children, such as ensuring their mobiles are not used after a certain time in the evening. (A great deal of internet bullying goes on in the early hours of the morning.)

Young people push the boundaries to find out what is acceptable. If parents don’t provide those boundaries, it can be frightening and confusing to the young person.

How many times over the years have I heard a student say about a particular teacher that they liked him or her because ‘ they are strict but nice and kind’? I think a lot of parents would like that accolade. Mrs SUSAn fELLA,

Enfield, Middx.

Labour’s PFI con

WHEN private finance initiative (PFI) contracts were introduced by the John Major government, many health professionals advised against using them to build hospitals.

Nevertheless, labour later saw an opportunity to hive off the cost of building 102 NHS projects using PFI contracts. The build cost was £11.2 billion and the initial lease agreements amounted to £66 billion. This was despite labour’s hostility towards PFI when in opposition.

This move put NHS trusts into financial meltdown. Bizarrely, the labour Party is now saying it would bring ‘wasteful’ PFI contracts back into the public sector, without any apology for its incompetence in building hospitals under PFI in the past.

It’s similar to labour’s other con trick regarding student tuition fees.

The labour government’s Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998 introduced student tuition fees. Then its Higher Education Act 2004 raised fees to £3,000 a year.

The Browne Review, instigated by labour in 2009, recommended that fees should be raised again and in 2010 the Coalition government controversially lifted them to £9,000.

We all remember what labour said at the last election: ‘ We will scrap student tuition fees.’ But cunningly it didn’t apologise for introducing the fees in the first place! JoHn ALBiSTon,

Tunbridge Wells. I SPENT 25 years in local government and saw the huge increase in PFI schemes under New labour.

In the mid-Nineties, the Tories, opposed by labour, allowed private companies to build new prisons under PFI. But on taking office in 1997, labour expanded PFI to schools and the NHS.

Many labour councils are saddled with PFI debt after demolishing perfectly good schools that were nearing the end of their capital debt.

It beggars belief that many of those labourites now applauding Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell are the very same people who spread PFI across large areas of the public sector and put huge profits into the corporate and banking sector.

At its party conference this week, labour clearly forgot to mention it was Gordon Brown and Ed Balls who increased the national debt by maxing up on the PFI credit card during their spending spree.

name and address supplied

Bad uncles

THE young of the Sixties were duped into believing the avuncular, bearded Communist leader of North Vietnam was affable and scrupulous. They called him ‘Uncle Ho’.

Today’s youth are being duped into believing the avuncular, bearded Communist leader of North Islington is affable, dignified and scrupulous. They call him ‘Uncle Jez’.

J. CARR, Sheffield.

Hypocrisy, Jacob?

JACOB REES-MOGG says he cannot approve of abortion no matter how horrific the circumstances of conception, because the act is one of taking life, which is sacred.

If he became PM, would this stance also be applied to going to war in self-defence? If not, there is a definite whiff of hypocrisy. AnGELA SoUTHGATE,

duffield, derby.