Sir – Robin Gill is to be much commended for his letter (Leap in the dark, March 8) in which he set out the fallacies and deceits which underlie Michael Gove’s academies policy and practice and the uncritical support given to them by the cabinet of Oxfordshire County Council.

By citing the Department of Education’s own analysis of GCSE results for 2910-11, in which non-academy secondaries outperformed(in pupils who achieved 5+ GCSEs, or equivalent, at A*-C, including maths and English) converter academies by nearly eight per cent and sponsor-led academies by 11.2 per cent, Mr Gill has demonstrated the straight-and-crooked thinking which comes naturally to Michael Gove and his supporters.

Melinda Tilley, Oxfordshire County Council cabinet member for schools improvement, was recently quoted in the Oxford Mail (March 10): “I am passionate about school attainment and, according to Michael Gove, academies improve twice as fast as other schools”. Really? The GCSE figures for 2010-11 from Mr Gove’s department don’t bear this claim out.

And Robin Gill is also right to question why there has been no consultation in Oxfordshire about plans to force a number of “named primary schools” into the academy trough; that these plans were announced by press release and not directly to the schools in question is an abuse of responsibility and one for which Mrs Tilley and her colleagues should be deeply ashamed, and apologetic.

Bruce Ross-Smith, Headington