Reading your story about a pending teacher strike (The Argus, September 6), I couldn’t believe Ron Gordon, the president of the Brighton and Hove branch of the National Union of Teachers.

He was trashing performance-related pay with the feeble reasoning that smarter teachers earning more than average teachers might not share their success strategy with teachers who may not be as bright.

Well, in my world, no exceptional salesperson would work hard just to support the order-takers, ie, an “average” salesperson, or share with him or her their method of achieving targets.

It’s up to individual teachers to do better, not rely on the ability of others. Our schools and children, thanks to the likes of Tony Blair, have suffered enough from box-ticking and useless individuals who believe the one-size-fits-all contribution to teaching is sufficient. Well, it’s not.

The past has witnessed year after year of school leavers waving shiny new certificates obtained through the lowering of standards.

Our future as a nation depends on teaching our children to the highest degree possible, not bringing them down into line with the best an “average” teacher can offer.

It has nothing to do with which teacher earns more money but everything to do with the proper and rightful teaching of our children, in which every taxpayer is an investor. As such, we are entitled to the best teachers being rewarded for their better and above-average input.

Paul Butterfill, Stag Close, Henfield

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