Letter: A Prime Minister fortified by the unloved and unfit

YOU SUGGEST ('Is he up to the job?', 4 April) that a perceived determination 'to bring back selective schools' flies in the face of the Prime Minister's talk of a 'classless society'. Surely, in a truly classless society, the idea of selecting pupils for courses designed to develop their particular abilities is common sense? It is the particularly English notion that those whose natural abilities are other than academic are somehow inferior that has turned us into a third-rate nation.

I dream of the day when all abilities are recognised as being of equal value to the community, and when schools which encourage technical and craft skills are accorded equal status with the grossly overrated grammar schools of yesteryear.

Frank Parker

Goole, North Humberside