I was disappointed to see the same old misunderstanding of the Ofsted grading system in Roy Blatchford’s article “Never forget: satisfactory won’t wash” (18 November). In England we have a comparative inspection system: we use RAISEonline to compare one school against the rest, and when the progress pupils make is average we call that satisfactory. Only people who are detached from the reality of the inspection system believe all pupils can make above average progress. Under the current and future framework, there will always be a huge proportion of schools in this category. It’s a simple, demoralising truth.

Paul Rushforth, Headteacher, Minehead Middle School, Somerset.