Angered by report on failing schools

It is not often that I feel the need to write to the paper but your headline feature "Axe Threat to Area Schools", June 10, made me incensed enough to do so.

As deputy headteacher in one of the schools listed in your paper as "failing" I would be the first person to acknowledge there is always room for improvement.

There always is and in many ways it is what leadership is all about - the striving for continuous improvement and excellence. However to label us and most, if not all, of the other schools listed, as "failing" is a travesty of justice.

It never ceases to amaze me how our so-called education chiefs in the Government can come up with such crackpot and fundamentally flawed ways of judging a school's performance.

To create a threshold measure of 30 per cent of students achieving five or more good GCSE grades, including English and maths, takes no account whatsoever of the ability of the students who attend the school.

Under such a system a selective grammar school just meeting the 30 per cent threshold would be okay, but an inner city school serving a deprived area that achieves 29 per cent would be "failing". This threshold measure seriously devalues the achievements of students who have worked hard for their results, but who do not quite manage five goodâ passes, including English and maths.

J D Larking, Little Wenlock