Letter: School duties

Sir: I have read few news comments which are more unjustifiable than those in the wake of the two girls' abduction. The notion that schools should contact parents or guardians on each and every occasion that a child fails to register at morning class is incredible.

The suggested responsibilities of teachers are becoming wider daily. Manifold varieties of incident around the country are stimuli for further demands. A logical reaction to this would be to issue detailed job specifications for teachers, a common enough feature in many jobs and professions, but which, in a similar manner to performance-related pay, would be inappropriate to the role of teacher in our schooling system, which stresses the importance of communal personal and social education, amongst other categories. (Inter alia, the resulting list would surely justify the claim for significant salary increases.)

The premise that these multifarious activities should stretch even further into the 18 or so non-school hours per day is further evidence of the "control freakery" in present society at large.

DAVID HENDRA

Clevedon, Somerset