SIR – I assume the Keith Thomson writing about Lord Nash’s maths issues (T&A, November 19) is the same as the one who serves as your environmental columnist.
Bearing in mind he seems to be a devout left-winger, it is an event of surpassing rarity for me to agree with him. Lord Nash’s follow up to Mr Gove’s intemperate alleged remarks about Bradford’s “appalling” education record provides the occasion for that agreement.
However, the daft notion that all can be “above average” is not an invention solely of Conservative incumbents at the Department for Education.
As a long-serving school governor, I well recall the pressure under the increasingly dysfunctional government of Messrs Blair and Brown, for all schools to achieve “value added” scores using the Fischer Family Trust dataset representing the top quartile of performance. Under Labour Government guidance, all schools were expected to be in the top 25 per cent! Lord Nash’s current losing battle with logic and statistics is patently nothing new.
Mike Pollard, Moorfield Drive, Baildon
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