John Howson is right to say savings need to be made in the education sector (“How to cut millions of pounds without harming the chalk face”, September 17).

However, his suggestion that secondary schools take full responsibility for training their own, and only their own, teachers is impractical. Many are reluctant or unable to get involved and would be unlikely to welcome complete responsibility. In our experience, those who are involved welcome the partnership arrangements that exist with universities and other training providers.

There is a need for new teachers to enter the profession each year and the idea of a year’s moratorium on teacher training is misguided: we would be left with a potentially big gap in the number of teachers across all subjects and in all areas.

It should be recognised that more than 30,000 new teachers a year are trained and three quarters of those are the product of partnerships between universities and schools.

The training of our teachers is a true success story - and should be celebrated, not cut.

James Noble-Rogers, Executive director, Universities’ Council for the Education of Teachers (UCET).