If Raymond Soltysek does not wish to engage in mud-slinging (TESS October 16), perhaps he could refrain from describing my life as “lonely and insecure”, and restrict himself to discussing matters of work.

My previous letter was not a call to bring back “the beating of children”. The point I made was that, since the ability to discipline violent and abusive pupils by exclusion was eroded by people not actually working every day in the classroom, schools and teachers have been left to feel that any misdemeanours on the part of the pupils are a reflection of their own failures, whereas the best-run schools are the ones where there are appropriate sanctions to deal with such behaviour.

Finally, a thought: if Mr Soltysek is not, as he claims, an “expert”, then why on earth is he involved in training teachers?

R Brown, Glasgow.