It is true that in one respect CfBT’s postgraduate certificate in education course failed. The reason was the organisation which previously administered the course took on a few candidates to teach maths who did not have the appropriate qualifications.

In other words your description of CfBT was about as enlightening as it would be if you implied that a head recently appointed to turn around a failing school was not fit for some task or other because she was head of a failing school.

In fact the PGCE course which we run, and certainly those elements of it which have been built up since we took over management of it, got encouragingly good scores. There are difficulties in running a new type of course and, given the debate about the effectiveness of traditional teacher training, a professional journal might be expected to be interested in such issues. Thus far you have shown no interest.

Of course you should also be interested in whether the private sector has anything to offer in place of the services of failing LEAs, but all too often your news coverage suggests that The TES has a strong preference for coming up with a negative answer to that question.

Neil McIntosh

Chief executive

CfBT Education Services

1 The Chambers

East Street, Reading