I LISTENED to headmaster Eric Hester's speech at the St Ambrose College speech night recently, when he asked why non-Catholics should have a vote in how Catholic schools are run.

This is a question which I posed to the Secretary of State in May last year.

I received a reply from a Mr David Shand stating 'the ballot... would be about whether or not the grammar school or schools concerned should continue to select pupils on the basis of academic ability... church schools would still be able to give priority to pupils of a particular faith in order to preserve the ethos of the school'.

Neatly side stepped, sir.

To oppose selection at one end of the scale yet propose 'creamed off' master classes at the other simply doesn't add up.

Education today doesn't appear to be about what is best for the child but about fitting it into the political debate of the day. This is bad for our children and ultimately bad for the country.

British education is in a sorry state and will remain so unless the revolutionaries of the Sixties - who are now firmly enthroned in the bastions of our education hierarchy - admit they got it wrong.

Perhaps Mr Hester has seen the writing on the wall.

Mrs P Lynch, Moss Lane, Altrincham.

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.