'It was the right decision not to bring back all primary school children before end of summer term'

Schools and teachers have gone above and beyond for all children during the pandemic, but it was never going to be easy to safely reopen all primary schools with a recovery curriculum. After negative research regarding health risks, the education secretary has made the right decision to scrap a pledge to get all primary children back in the classroom for a month before the summer term ended.

This year’s GCSE and A-level grades will be determined by their teacher’s judgement as a one-off system; a decision with robust criticism of the educational system and devaluation of exams. Although I suspect few would wish to see the return of the duel exam system of GCE O-Level and even fewer would support the re-introduction of the 11-plus exam which effectively wrote-off thousands of bright children.

Before you could buy a degree, only four per cent of school kids were clever enough to go to university. Yet since the 1990s our young people have been encouraged to go to university, regardless of their suitability. Many drop-out or leave three years later heavily indebted with a qualification which does not help to gain work. Some 2.5 million Students, pay a stratospheric £22bnn a year in tuition fees (admittedly my arithmetic is shaky) which is an expensive way to find out a paper degree isn’t a guarantee to that dream job. I do not doubt that most students work very hard with exam syllabuses but more than one generation has been betrayed by our education system.

The 1980s Youth Training Scheme should be re-introduced. It helped many 16-year-olds gain work experience and valuable life skills.

Rosemary Twelftree

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