As might be expected from someone of Martin Roberts’ breadth of educational experience and achievement, he speaks with passion governed by knowledge and intelligence.

“The tick-box, statistics-driven approach” he cites is rotten to the core, as are the way league tables are published raw, with neither qualification nor caveat.

Mr Roberts might like to know that just last week the following was published: Measuring Success: League Tables in the Public Sector (A British Academy Policy Centre report) by Harvey Goldstein, F.B.A., Professor of Social Statistics at the University of Bristol and Beth Foley of the British Academy.

This report should be essential reading, for it lucidly exposes how damaging and dangerous crude and raw league tables have been and are, whether in education, in the NHS, or in policing policy, etc.

Mr Roberts advocates as the core of what teachers and staff should be all about. Whether Tribal plc, the ‘global educational provider’ which supplies Ofsted inspectors for this part of England, can fully understand this is doubtful, in a world where inspections are business.

Tribal, whose profits and share values have slipped in recent years, needs as many inspections as possible, even allowing for its boost from lucrative contracts recently signed with a number of Gulf State Governments.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH Bowness Avenue Headington Oxford