Letters: Nursing

Sir: The concept of the "naughty nurse" is nothing new ("Why is it considered an offence to criticise nurses", 5 March). When I trained at a large teaching hospital in the 1980s there were wry comments made about the fact that the nurses' home had a red light on the top (an aircraft warning light) and a warden called Mrs Hoare.

Nurses have not been "angels"in this respect for many years. Even in the days when nurses' homes were locked at 10pm, nurses regularly used to escape for a little fun, as described in Two Pairs of Feet by Monica Dickens.

The nursing leaders have tried their best over the decades to minimise this perception, and the nursing press regularly bursts with indignation whenever the regular press runs "naughty nurse" stories. What is annoying is that equally promiscuous behaviour by doctors and other health professionals is never commented upon. Surely in this day and age what an adult does in their spare time is their own business.

I am much more concerned at the lack of professionalism when nurses discuss their exploits over the patients' heads. We were taught that discussion of any topic over a patient was beyond the pale, and our tutors pointed to the bad form shown by doctors who regularly discussed the patient's progress over the patient's head on ward rounds.

The nursing hierarchy would do well to address this, as it directly impinges on the care given to the patients, rather than trying to control the reporting of what has always happened in places where large numbers of young people gather.

Liz White

Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire

Why schools are failing children

Sir: Deborah Orr writes: "The children have to jump through a lot of hoops . . . but that is to test their teachers and their schools, not them." (Opinion, 5 March)

Ms Orr may not realise what getting children to "jump" involves. I know of a school where SATs preparation involves Year 2 classes in four and a half hours of literacy and numeracy a day from mid-February until May. Isn't that appalling?

So it is that government-driven testing diminishes the child's experience, hampering their development and almost certainly flattening scores on measures the system finds so very important.

But the idea of children grouped in achievement levels rather than by age is ludicrous and socially unacceptable. Just imagine being 14 and having to learn to read with five-year-olds. How silly. Of course, what really makes the most difference to "basic skills" is taking the brakes off teachers. A mix of individual attention and a chance for children to talk about their learning – that's what helps them to read, write and figure things out.

Dr Lyn Dawes

Senior Lecturer in Education, University of Northampton

Sir: Deborah Orr was misleading when she wrote: "The Government has for some time now recommended that synthetic phonics should be the preferred method of teaching, and most schools have taken heed." In fact, schools were only legally obliged to start teaching reading via synthetic phonics six months ago, and many waited till that date for the Government's own "Letters and Sounds" synthetic phonics programme to be complete.

Prior to that, most DoE officials and LEA advisers, who had based their professional reputations on promoting the "whole word" method, fought tooth and nail against the implementation of synthetic phonics. This was despite the growing evidence for its success in teaching those "failing" children for whom the "whole word" methods simply didn't work.

Many teachers who wished to switch to a phonics-based method found themselves stymied by their colleagues or managers, who were understandably reluctant to face the fact that there was a problem with the methods they had been using in good faith. So, sadly, we can't expect to see improved reading abilities on admission to secondary school for some years yet.

Deborah Orr is right, however, about the way in which children have been pushed on to the next level whether they were ready or not. Unfortunately, a big reason for this has been the comfortably woolly belief inherent in the "natural" whole-word method that children will learn to read "when they are ready", even if that is not till age eight or nine. Thus teachers didn't need to worry if a child left their class without making progress.

I believe that if teachers had been able to stay with the same group of children throughout primary school, so that they could see with their own eyes how many children were being disastrously failed by the whole-word method, they would have insisted on switching to a phonics system long ago.

Chris Nicholson

Hexham, Northumberland

Sir: Briony Adams is quite wrong when she claims that the point of school education before league tables was to prepare people for later on in life (letters, 4 March). School education has rarely prepared anyone for later on in life.

Beyond the three Rs (and in recent years IT) school education has very little benefit later on in life, since most employers don't need an employee who can discuss the Italian Renaissance or recite Newton's laws of physics. Though there are some careers that do require these skills, such as a teacher, usually employers require that such people have been educated to degree level, rather than school level.

As long as students can read, write, count, and use computers at the end of their school education, does it matter whether they learn anything that will be of no practical value in later life?

Thomas Wiggins

Wokingham, Berkshire

Sir: The secondary school offered to our son is rated inadequate by Ofsted in teaching, student behaviour, personal development and well-being, and overall. Accommodation is very poor. Academic results are well below the national average. If it were any other kind of product or service it would legally be "not fit for purpose".

Somehow, we will make alternative arrangements for our son's education; we then have to satisfy the education authority that these are adequate. But why? Shouldn't the LEA be trying to make the alternative arrangements for him, or at least try to justify why he should risk his future at their school?

Charles Hinkley

London SE3

Days of debate on the Lisbon Treaty

Sir: Simon Carr's sketch (4 March) about Monday's debate on the new European Reform Treaty was misleading and inaccurate.

First, Mr Carr claims that the Government has not allowed time for scrutiny of the text. The Bill to ratify the new European treaty has had more days of debate in the Commons than the Nice Treaty, the Amsterdam Treaty and the Single European Act put together. The Maastricht Treaty debate was characterised by a series of obscure, technical debates that only European anoraks could hope to understand and which had very little to do with the substance of the treaty. In contrast, MPs have had the opportunity of debating the content of the new Treaty, which they have taken full advantage of.

Second, Mr Carr claims that whole areas of the treaty have been left "entirely undiscussed". He cites defence, social policy, freedom of movement of people and borders and visa controls. Perhaps he hasn't spent much time in the House of Commons during February, as whole days on the floor of House were dedicated to just these issues.

He then goes on to complain about the absence of a debate on transport policy. Amendments would have been allowed to this policy in the context of the debate on the single market, but no amendments were tabled because there are no significant changes to transport policy in the new treaty. Again perhaps Mr Carr needs to spend more time reading the Lisbon Treaty and watching the lengthy debate in the House of Commons than levelling false criticisms at the Government.

Geoff Hoon MP

Chief Whip, 12 Downing Street, London SW1

The Sixties, a time of social turmoil

Sir: Mark Steel's assertion that the more disciplinarian and religious a society becomes the more it produces suppressed and twisted people really cannot be sustained by reference to the Sixties, as he has done ("Sixties nostalgia that hid the horrors of Jersey", 5 March).

There may not have been hoodies, but mods and rockers routinely trashed seaside towns with their mass fights on bank holidays. The notion that bobbies on the beat (there were none, they had already been replaced by Panda cars) could clip scallywags round the ear was as much nostalgic folklore then as it is now. Children, far from "knowing their place", challenged just about every social convention that existed.

"Almost all sexuality seen as seedy and grubby"? No. "If it feels good, do it"was more like it. Contraceptive pills and the consequent explosion of promiscuity, gay liberation, the legalisation of abortion, pornography and feminism were all hallmarks of the Sixties.

Before jumping to false conclusions, Mark Steel should have taken the trouble to find out what the Sixties were really like – he could have asked his dad, or perhaps read the obituary of Paul Raymond which appeared in the same edition.

David Humphrey

London W5

Sir: Mark Steel is, I suspect, guilty of premature Noughties nostalgia. He holds up the truculent hoodie as the result of non-violent parenting. Oh yeah?

I have the doubtful privilege of working in an inner-city call centre, where hoodies abound. I overhear my young colleagues' childhood reminiscences. It doesn't make for pleasant listening.

Name and address supplied

Train journey to a world of madness

Sir: Philip Hensher (4 March) is absolutely spot-on with his criticism of First Great Western.

My wife recently complained to First Great Western about a particular train service between Bristol and London Paddington. She mentioned the serious overcrowding that occurred on that service even at a very early stage of the train's journey.

First Great Western replied at some length, failing to address the central issue which my wife had raised. What left her quite nonplussed, however, was the statement made in the course of that reply that: "We believe that customers who board a crowded train are telling us that they would rather stand on the train than wait for the next service."

Even allowing for the wonderful world of First Great Western, in which, presumably, people do not have appointments to keep or connections to catch, so they can idle around on the platform until a train with available seats turns up, such a fatuous remark must beggar belief.

David Busby

Bath

Sir: Having had occasion to travel from London to Cardiff on a couple of recent occasions, I can empathise with Philip Hensher.

The usual return fare for the journey is an eye-watering £158. By buying a ticket from London to Reading, then Reading to Swindon and finally Swindon to Cardiff it comes in at around a third of this figure. And one has the added bonus of sending the ticket collector (sorry Train Manager) into virtual apoplexy.

Not content with announcing to the whole carriage that the tickets were invalid, this officious bureaucrat – apparently recruited from one of the less savoury security authorities of the former Eastern Europe – took some delight in explaining how he had thrown someone off the train the previous week for attempting the same "trick".

My invitation to him to consult the permitted routes manual led to a reluctant retraction, but my two (less seasoned) travelling companions said they were made to feel more like fraudsters than valued travellers.

And with all the money saved I was able to breakfast royally on eggs Benedict, which, in fairness, were faultless.

Andrew C Blundy

London SE7

Sir: Sympathies with Philip Hensher . I long ago gave up on First Great Western after the following exchange:

"Why don't you serve breakfast on the 7.30 when you do on the 7 o'clock and the 8 o'clock?"

"Ah, you have to go on the 7 or 8 o'clock if you want breakfast."

"Yes, but why can't I get it on the 7.30 as well?"

"We only serve it on the 7 and 8 o'clock. . . ."

Rod Evans

London NW5

Briefly...

Fighting MP

Sir: S U Sjolin asks whether any MPs' children have served on Iraq or Afghanistan (letter, 5 March). The Conservative MP Mark Lancaster has done a tour of Afghanistan in his capacity as a major in the Territorial Army.

Alex Swanson

Milton Keynes

Whose country?

Sir: Why is it that MPs of all parties talk about "this country", when they really mean England. We have a Scottish PM who also refers to "this country" As "this Parliament", namely Westminster, has no authority over Scottish education, health or university fees, when talking on these topics, would MPs please give "this country" its proper name: England?

M Stringfellow

Chetnole, Dorset

My round

Sir: Michael du Pre (letter, 5 March) suggests that the practice of buying rounds contributes to excessive drinking through our "feeling obliged to stay and buy your round or hanging around for a repayment". His analysis is mistaken. The great social institution of "getting the beer in" isn't an exercise in distributive justice. As every Englishman knows, it is a way for us to express our feelings for each other without having the embarrassment of saying something nice. I feel Mr du Pre is missing the pint.

Sean Cordell

Sheffield

Graceful turbines

Sir: I cannot argue with the engineering points raised by I McFarlane, who styles himself "C. Eng" (letter, 5 March). However, he then goes on: "Wind power is . . . unsightly. . . damaging to the price of houses in the vicinity." What kind of tin-eyed anti-aesthete could prefer the slab-sided concrete lump of a nuclear station to the graceful, soaring beauty of a wind turbine?

Edward Collier

Gotherington, Gloucestershire

Russian bears

Sir: Your cartoon on 3 March of Putin, a bear, manipulating Medvedev, a glove puppet, was amusing. Medved means "bear" in Russian. Could the glove be on another's paw?

John D Anderson

Shipley, West Yorkshire