Harsh lessons

From: Doug Clark, Skipton.

YOUR editorial ‘The ultimate prize’ (The Yorkshire Post, January 27) rightly highlights the need for education to be the top priority for the mythical ‘levelling up’ project.

Robert Halfon, the Tory chairman of the education select committee, bemoans the deficiencies of our education system, but his party can take the lion share of the blame for any deficiencies.

The Covid catch-up plan announced by the Government last summer amounted to a derisory £50 per pupil for three years, far short of what was called for by the widely respected Education Recovery Commissioner Kevan Collins, who resigned when his comprehensive plans were discarded, and a long way behind the amount many other countries are investing into helping their young people.

But the problems go much deeper than this. I was a longserving teacher when the Tories came to power in 2010 and Michael Gove set about dismantling the skills-based curriculum that was in place and replacing it with a knowledgebased curriculum.

Mr Gove took every opportunity to belittle the teaching profession, at one point telling the House of Commons that schools in Bradford were an ‘absolute disgrace’, in complete ignorance of the efforts of the staff and young people in those schools.

Disillusioned, I left teaching in 2014 and resurrected a previous career. Last year I answered a request from a local college to do some part-time lecturing but I turned it down when I found out it would be on a zero hours contract.

If Mr Halfon and his party are serious about prioritising education they have got a lot of work to do to reverse the damage done over the last 12 years.