Watching the Teaching Awards, it was truly inspirational seeing people who excelled at this most difficult of “arts”.

What particularly shone through was their commitment, their belief in the children and their courage to be creative - a lost quality in so many areas these days.

As Education Secretary Michael Gove beamed, I wonder if he would later reflect on the last 25 years for schools, specifically the arrival of educational “systems”.

The awards made the right approach crystal clear. Make teaching and learning the prime objective, not the subsidiary one; improve teacher training using people like Saturday’s winners as exemplars; encourage creativity in teachers; dump any data that does not assist the school in improving its teaching; and use the word “target” as aspiration rather than asphyxiation.

Tony Roberts, Admin and membership secretary, NAHT Lancashire branch, Preston.