IN HER extensive coverage of Key Stage Two figures released last week (Oxford Mail, December 16), Fran Bardsley includes St Nicholas’ Primary School, in Old Marston, Oxford, as one of seven city schools which failed to meet the Government’s floor targets of 60 per cent of pupils achieving Level 4 in English and mathematics.

Whether these pernicious league tables are of any value is open to question – in the case of St Nicholas, the number of pupils counted in include those who are in the Chinnor Unit, pupils who do not in fact take SATS, a factor which should of course have been factored in, but wasn’t.

Accuracy matters, as does a school’s reputation.

As for Melinda Tilley's characterisation of results in the city of Oxford’s as “basically rubbish”, it must be wondered whether such brash, crass and trashy use of English is of any educational or social value.

Since Mrs Tilley became Oxfordshire County Council’s cabinet member for schools improvement, most of her public pronouncements seem to have been empty of analysis or of constructive criticism and, as such, have been, and are, deeply offensive.

Language matters and it could surely be hoped that Mrs Tilley, of all people, should seek to set a good example. Or is this too much to ask?

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, Bowness Avenue, Headington