Out-of-touch views on schools are no solution

From: Lucy Gill, Barnsley.

AS a teacher working in a classroom every day, I feel that I am in a better position to comment upon the crisis in UK classrooms than Chris McGovern (The Yorkshire Post, January 3).

Education is an investment for the future and under no circumstances should budgets be cut. He is clearly out of touch when he states ‘if we were to reduce classroom assistants by 50 per cent it would require teachers to use more effective whole class teacher led lessons’.

Teaching assistants are fast becoming an endangered species.

Many of us are already working without teaching assistants to the detriment of the young people we strive to educate.

Clearly fewer adults in the class means each child receives less individual attention.

Mr McGovern falls into the trap of assuming Asian teaching methods are the panacea to all of education’s ills. He fails to acknowledge the success of the Asian model is cultural, not structural.

In Asia, teachers are treated as professionals and respected by pupils and parents alike. If children fall behind, as they inevitably do with the whole class model, parents are expected to take responsibility for (pay for) extra education if their child falls behind. Is this likely here?