It is frustrating in the extreme that, as usual, you are allowing the minority of grant-maintained schools to drive the agenda.
Your emotive article “Church poised to lose its flock” (TES, October 10) did not do justice to the real threat facing church schools. Any form of re-organisation which emasculates aided status will do a far greater disservice to the Churches’ historic role in providing education. Therefore any attempt to placate church GM schools by making foundation and aided status virtually the same will have disastrous consequences for church schools.
These are dangerous times. You suggest that as many as 46 of the formerly voluntary-aided church GM schools are not yet convinced that it is worth their while to return to aided status. This is both worrying and disappointing.
However I now suggest you take some soundings among the majority of church schools, that is, those which have remained aided or controlled. For it is what these schools decide to do which will determine whether the church can maintain its role in a long-established and proven dual partnership.
D RICHARDS
Headteacher St Aidan’s Church of England high school Oatland Drive Harrogate North Yorkshire
