Sir – Your feature on the city/county council initiative to tackle under-achievement in Oxford’s primary schools (January 24) failed to take account of two significant changes introduced by the Government, that made this initiative possible and very necessary.

The Localism Act extended councils’ ‘well-being’ powers to a ‘power of general competence’. This allows local authorities to act generally in the interests of their community. This measure led to the city council’s decision in last year’s budget to allocate £1.2m over four years to help primary schools to improve their results.

We did this on a cross-party basis because there is a consensus that under-achievement at age 11 is having a serious and damaging long-term effect on the life chances and job opportunities of our children. Fifty-five per cent of the jobs in Oxfordshire are in the knowledge economy and that proportion is increasing. A good start in education is vital if these jobs are to be accessible by local residents.

The Government’s Education Act abolished local education authorities. The British education system was managed by local communities until the Coalition got its hands on it. Now, the vast majority of funding passes through the county councils and goes directly to individual schools; the policy of turning all schools into independent academies managed by their governors, places all the funding and control decisions in the hands of the Secretary of State. Local authorities are left with a very limited range of statutory functions and a massively reduced (and declining) budget with which to perform them. Responsibility without power is a very uncomfortable situation.

In these circumstances, where it is difficult for the county to squeeze out adequate funding for school improvement, our joint initiative has more than doubled the resources that are available for improvement work in city primaries.

As my colleague, Steve Curran, put it at the end of the feature: ‘This is not about politics, it’s about children’.

Bob Price, Leader, Oxford City Council