Sir – I would not endorse Mrs Tilley’s use of the term ‘basically rubbish’ to describe Oxfordshire’s KS2 results (Report, December 22), as it doesn’t help solve the problem.

However, when pupils in Hackney outperform those living in in the West Oxfordshire District Council area in terms of the percentage of pupils achieving at the expected level in both English and Mathematics at KS2; and only in 15 of the more than 300 district council areas did pupils perform worse than pupils in schools within Oxford city, there is room for considerable improvement across much of the county. I have already challenged governors and heads to set a target of five per cent improvement. There are of course, 15 schools already achieving 100 per cent on this measure at KS2, but elsewhere there is room to do better.

I doubt that isolating schools as individual academies is the answer in the primary sector, as the Government seems determined to do by sidelining education authorities and removing their powers to step in when schools are under-performing. But, if that is to be the way of the future, politicians at Westminster will have to take responsibility for what has hitherto been seen as a local service.

Professor John Howson, Oxford