Your “Ask an Inspector” article (TES Magazine, March 21) concerns knocking back key stage 1 grades to show better progress to KS2. This possibility has been of great concern to those of us keen to retain middle-school systems because schools passing on their pupils before KS2 Sats do not have the same potential interest in holding back at KS1. Our county first school KS1 results have been described as outstanding, but we don’t seem to see Ofsted or education academics crawling over local KS1 teaching to identify and bottle what is so outstanding about it. Sadly, our middle schools are being damned by the associated KS1-2 value-added data.
Mike Brown, Newcastle upon Tyne.