Spectator letters: Defending super-heads, and how to drink your yak’s milk

In defence of super-heads

Sir: I would like to defend head teachers all over the country from the assertions made in Mary Dejevsky’s article (‘Super-heads will roll’, 7 December). The international Pisa studies — which proved how urgently the English education system needs to improve — show that greater autonomy for head teachers within proper accountability structures produces better results for children. That is why this government’s reforms have been designed to transfer powers to heads, away from council control.

We’ve balanced this increased autonomy with sharper, stronger accountability. Head teachers are charged with spending taxpayers’ money wisely and honestly and, as accounting officers, are personally responsible for the resources under their control. The requirement for academy trusts to have independently audited accounts means that the framework for individual academies is more rigorous, transparent and challenging than that faced by maintained schools.

While the handful of cases cited are indeed shocking (two occurring before this government came to power), they are noteworthy precisely because they are so unusual. The overwhelming majority of head teachers are motivated purely by a noble moral purpose — to give more children than ever before the sort of high-quality education previously reserved only for the very rich.

Mary Dejevsky is questioning the motives of a group of dedicated public servants working hard to transform children’s lives for the better. They need our support, not our suspicion.
Lord Nash
Parliamentary Under Secretary  of State for Schools
House of Lords, London SW1

A degree of value

Sir: Anthony Horowitz (‘A writer’s notebook’, 14–28 December) is wrong to say that ‘the catastrophe of university fees was that they made a direct correlation between education and employment’. This is one of the few good things to come out of the fees hike. Universities are now under pressure to provide degree programmes that make students more attractive to employers, and students are under pressure to avoid wasting their, and taxpayers’, money on degrees like golf management (surely not the pinnacle of ‘education for education’s sake’ for which Horowitz pines).