Groups such as the Rolling Stones will easily find ways to pay hardly any income tax, and businessmen will do likewise, while even fewer language teachers will take up the opportunity to improve their knowledge and skills by taking part in one-year teaching exchanges.

As someone who has benefited from the teacher exchange programme, I deplore the recent tax changes made by this Government. The teaching of modern languages will inevitably suffer.

My own year in Germany was thoroughly enjoyable, but I needed every penny of my relatively poor pay packet in order to make the most of the experience, and even then I had to borrow.

At that time, incidentally, the value of the pound was even higher than it is now.

“Education, education, education”? Not at the cost of a few bob in the Treasury coffers, it would seem.

AF Litten

8 Parkview Road Croydon