I'm afraid I can't resist it... Councillor Dobson is reported as saying, "When the grammar school and the secondary modern school were built it should have been foreseen that comprehensive education was coming but they still went ahead and put them on two sites."

In the '60s and early '70s I was on the governing bodies of both schools and, soon after the St John's new building was completed, word came through that funding was likely to become available for a new secondary modern school, which at that time was a collection of decaying Nissen huts on the Common.

Knowing that comprehensivisation was in the air, I suggested to both sets of governors that it would be sensible to put the new school beside St John's on the same site.

This proposal was turned down flat by both groups, on the grounds that neither of the two staffs nor the parents would accept it, and that in the interests of "parity of esteem" watchwords of the period the two schools needed to be distinct, distinctive and on separate sites.

My one positive contribution to the design of the new school was to suggest to the architect, when we first saw the draft plans of the building, that since his main staircase appeared to go straight out of the top floor windows, there were likely to be a few casualties.

Perhaps practising teachers can be of some use on governing bodies.

ALAN MACKICHAN

Lockeridge

Marlborough