PETER Martin’s reasoned and very reasonable petition (Viewpoints, November 27) for a call to arms over school expansion in Oxford and Oxfordshire, whereby views should be presented to Councillor Melinda Tilley, might be a counsel of despair, given that Mrs Tilley and her colleagues at County Hall earlier this year pledged their support for Michael Gove’s centralising academy and free school programmes.

Yes, as Oxfordshire’s cabinet member for education, Mrs Tilley could challenge Michael Gove and schools minister David Laws, but local democracy in England is slight at the best of times and even a voice as powerful as Vince Cable can’t stop Gove and Laws breaching the 2011 Education Act over admissions policy for two proposed Catholic schools in Cable’s Twickenham constituency.

Mr Martin’s resounding “It is not the community which is to do as politicans ask: rather, and importantly, they should inform themselves of our opinions and be guided by them as they consider how to lead the negotiation of difficult and demanding issues” should be agreed by everyone, even Michael Gove.

However, nothing Gove has done or said since May 2010 suggests he is in the least bit interested in the opinions of local communities.

Mrs Tilley says she wants to listen, but her possible representations on behalf of Oxfordshire schools and families won’t carry much weight up and down the corridors of Gove’s ‘totalitarian’ Department for Education in Whitehall.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, Bowness Avenue, Headington