With regards your article Academy accused over its GCSEs (January 22) and my letter (So, how much literacy teaching do our pupils actually get at school?), I would like to pick up Sue Croft’s mention of “disruptive students” and “pupils with behavioural difficulties” by bringing attention to the following from the Daily Mail, (October 18, 2010).

“Some two decades ago Martin Turner, a distinguished psychologist and expert on dyslexia, was forced out of his job and had his reputation blackened for suggesting that many diagnosed classroom disorders were actually caused by a systemic failure to teach children to read.”

The Daily Mail article also said: “...educational whistle-blowers have been punished.”

I would also point out that since the abandonment of daily hours of “rote” learning for infants the following has occurred. Firstly, the creation of charities such as National Literacy Trust devoted to helping with literacy, possession of which this country should be ashamed.

Secondly, a crime wave, of which Frank Field, Labour MP, said there were more violent crimes against the person in his constituency, Birkenhead, than there were in the entire country 50 years ago or 100 years ago. He said: “It’s one of those statistics which shows just how dramatic the social changes over the past half-century have been.”

Sue Croft can be forgiven for blaming the primaries that feed into her school, but definitely don’t blame the parents if they are incapable of overcoming primary school problems.

The infant/primary schools’ literacy failure since the 1960s feed into later schooling and life failure. Don’t blame the victims.

STEVE NICHOLSON, Campbell Road, Oxford