KEITH Mitchell’s “three key failings in our school system” (Monday’s Oxford Mail ViewPoints) are puzzling.

In point one he states that in Oxford itself “there is a crippling complacency based on an arrogant belief that we can do no wrong and no-one else can tell us how to do it better”, without telling “us” who the perpetrators of this complacency and arrogance are.

Is it headteachers, teachers, auxiliary staff, parents, or Oxfordshire County Council itself? Evidence would be helpful.

His second point about “failure of leadership in some schools ... rooted in our complacency ... and a sad view that children from deprived communities cannot be expected to do well” again would benefit from some evidence.

Or would Mr Mitchell say the evidence lies in “the league tables”? His third point about dysfunctional families also lacks substance.

Meanwhile, headteachers and school management teams are having to cope with shrinking budgets, freezes on school building/improvements, in sum struggling to provide provision at the most fundamental levels of material conditions, class sizes, employment of newly-qualified teachers,special needs arrangements, and so the list could run on.

Mr Mitchell has acknowledged that Education Secretary Michael Gove’s academy “gold rush” will undermine funding of the maintained sector in Oxford and Oxfordshire; this “gold rush” will also, if all schools convert or are forced into the academy arena, remove existing links between the county council and its current schools network.

Matters are urgent and serious informed discussion vital, from all of “us” (I speak as a parent and a teacher), which can lead, at the very least, to remedial action to save our educational fleet before it’s wrecked beyond repair on the rocks of academies and free schools.

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, Bowness Avenue, Headington, Oxford