As staff at the Crewe and Didsbury schools of education of Manchester Metropolitan University, we wish to dissociate ourselves from the comments about teacher training and literacy made by Alan Davies in his letter (TES, August 30).
No evidence supports claims that “the millions of children with poor reading and spelling skills are the unnecessary consequence of newly-qualified teachers being brainwashed by teacher-trainers into using the One Letter Makes One Sound Method to teach reading and spelling”.
We would be pleased to explain in detail to him the variety of approaches used in our schools of education that lead to balanced, thoughtful and successful methods of teaching of reading and spelling. The comments of Office for Standards in Education inspectors were most complimentary following both our recent inspections.
We wish to emphasise that Mr Davies’s letter expressed a personal view.
IRIS KEATING On behalf of the English subject team Crew School of Education SYLVIA PHILLIPS and ANNE CAMPBELL Didsbury School of Education The Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester