Congratulations on David Weston’s article (“Seven deadly sins of teacher development”, Professional, 21 June) about the traps facing teachers when choosing professional development. And well done to Gerard Kelly for giving it his editorial heft (“Taking the devil out of development”).

Teachers are fed up with professional development, which can be useless and expensive. It is, however, worth pointing out that Philippa Cordingley’s initial research reviews, which provided the basis for Mr Weston’s article, were paid for by the NUT teaching union to shape its own professional development programme. It stumped up #163;70,000, a considerable sum to spend on research in 2000. It is something that ministers, and indeed Mr Kelly, should remember when accusing teacher unions of being unprofessional and backward-looking.

John Bangs, Former assistant secretary for education, NUT.