School lesson in waste and complexity

From: John G Davies, Alma Terrace, East Morton, Keighley.

FREE marketeer Toby Young sold the Government a pup with his free school programme. The NUT estimated that the Government had wasted over £100m on the 62 free schools, university technical colleges and studio schools that effectively failed to get of the ground ( The Yorkshire Post, August 24).

His own West London free school has gone through three heads and he himself had to resign from various posts; yet here he is promoting more piein-the-sky ideas to resolve England’s shortage of skilled individuals.

I have long since lost count of the number of different types of state school that we have in this country. Every Education Minister seems to add his own pet scheme to mix without making any significant difference to the overall results.

My friends abroad are bewildered by the complexity of our system.

In France, Spain and Italy, theirs are based on a straightforward primary, middle and upper school system with specialisation only in the final two years, but all subjects are studied up to the end.

In France, even Philosophy is taken by everyone.

Finland, consistently one of the best performers, has an even simpler seven to 16 years comprehensive arrangement.

They believe that the comprehensive nature of their schools is the key to their high achievement across the board.