Mary Bousted (Letters, 16 September) may well be right about the popularity of Coalition policy, but the editorial she disputed was about public opinion of her planned strikes as much as it was about free schools. And if she feels she has the public on-side in that respect, she’s fatally mistaken. Joe and Joan Bloggs both know that teachers now enjoy better salaries than comparable employees in other jobs and that, even after the proposed reforms, their own hard-earned pensions (if they have them) will be far inferior to those enjoyed by the people who educate their kids.

Ben Gibbs, Ely, Cambridgeshire.