Letter: Testing times for educational reforms

Sir: Your leading article ('Mr Patten fails the test', 22 January) describes the imminent break-up of the 'consensus between politicians, parents and professionals that is essential to the success of the national curriculum and the Government's associated reforms'. The point is, surely, that such a consensus has never existed. The Education Secretary's oft-repeated assertions that parents and teachers are in favour of national curriculum reforms simply do not accord with the experience of those of us who work in education.

Even at the start of this period of reform, consultation was minimal. Now it barely happens, and the Secretary of State generally refuses to talk at all to the teachers' unions. This approach to policy making is not one on which consensus can be based.

The strong possibility that the profession might boycott the Key Stage 3 English tests represents an intriguing irony. When, in the past, teachers have taken industrial action, they have done so with heavy hearts, knowing that they risked harming the education of children in the short term in order to gain long-term improvements. In the current situation, it is likely that a boycott will be positively beneficial to schoolchildren in that they could then avoid devoting a considerable amount of time to the preparation and execution of tests which are, at best, of dubious educational value.

In the absence of any willingness on the part of the Government and its politically appointed National Curriculum Council to engage in any true debate about education with teachers or parents, we may perhaps hope that professionals, parents and children may themselves form alliances to combat the worst lunacies of these ill-informed and regressive reforms.

Yours faithfully,

BERNARD TRAFFORD

Headmaster

Wolverhampton Grammar School

Wolverhampton

22 January