What a state Will Hutton is in (“What a state our comprehensives are in” April 13). What is he proposing as an alternative to a fully comprehensive system? A selective system which, besides being completely inequitable, professor David Jesson has shown lowers standards?

Specialist schools which Tony Blair appears to be announcing as an option for all secondaries so restoring equity of funding? Selection by aptitude which is a nonsense nobody can explain? City academies where LEAs give away schools and their assets to private sponsors?

Comprehensives might be discredited in the eyes of parts of the media but opinion polls show that the great majority of parents still prefer not to see 70 per cent of their children labelled as failures at 11 plus.

Malcolm Horne
Media secretary, Bucks Parents for Comprehensive Education, Chalfont St Peter, Bucks