The article headed “Training courses go after poor inspections” (TES, October 30) gave a wholly wrong and inaccurate impression of the position with regard to our primary initial teacher-training courses at Reading University.
Our primary postgraduate certificate in education course was inspected last year and there is a non-compliance issue involved.
Owing to prompt action and the production of a positive recovery plan, however, the withdrawal of accreditation procedure is not being activated by the Teacher Training Agency. In last year’s inspection of 14 areas seen, only one, in the area of reading, was judged non-compliant and half were judged “good”.
You also referred inaccurately to the Office for Standards in Education’s inspection of our PGCE primary course as having criticised the “standards of literacy and numeracy among students”. OFSTED’s inspection assessed our trainees on their teaching of reading and number not their personal literacy and numeracy.
Roger Williams, The University of Reading Reading
