Isn’t life full of ironies? One of the most wonderful must be the news that Kenneth Baker is advocating the creation of academies to provide vocational education to post-14 students (“Universities to sponsor new 14-19 vocational academies”, March 13).

This is the same Kenneth Baker whose back-of-a-fag-packet national curriculum 20 years ago destroyed the vocational courses created in schools for students in their last two years of compulsory education.

I suggest anything supported by him should be treated with extreme caution, especially as vocational academies are probably a way of recreating the selective system that pre-dated comprehensives.

Kevin O’Regan, Former headteacher (until August 2008), Wolverley CE Secondary School, Worcestershire.