Children's futures at risk : LETTERS

THANK you for mentioning the reading recovery scheme in your leader, "Give schools time to think" (29 January). It was a helpful reminder to the public that this excellent initiative is now jeopardised by the lack of earmarked funding. We are not yet clear how much money will come to the programme from the Single Regeneration Grant but we suspect that it will not be as much as we received before. And it will certainly not be much use in enabling other local education authorities to trythe programme out for themselves.

Given the likely cuts in education budgets this year, we know that local education authorities will have some difficult choices to make. As you pointed out, reading recovery will be cheaper in the long run, but can education authorities afford to take a long-term view? It is very sad to see children's futures put at risk in this way.

Angela Hobsbaum Institute of Education London WC1