Sir – Your readers may like to consider the difference between shared aspiration and effective and accountable leadership. Ms Tomlinson states (County schools slipping behind, June 18) that she ‘wants to see Oxfordshire schools comparing more favourably with its neighbours’.

We might all, especially those with young people in schools under her supervision, share this aspiration.

But, as we have noted before, merely stating what she would like to see happen does not constitute leadership likely to deliver that outcome.

I have tracked back through recent Key Stage 3 (KS3) performance figures and discovered that we ranked seventh of 11 similar authorities on average aggregate points scored in 2006.

Those same young people’s average aggregate points score in their GCSE exams in 2008 again ranked us seventh of 11; we were ranked eighth for the percentage of these young people who achieved at least five good GCSEs including English and maths; and, including the Contextual Value-Added score with these measures, we ranked fifth.

Predictions, like aspirations, are not necessarily effective tools of accountability.

But for the 2007 cohort at KS3 (this Summer’s GCSE candidates), we ranked sixth of 11, fractionally below the average of those similar authorities; and for the 2008 figures (next summer’s GCSE cohort), eighth of 11, significantly below average.

I think what we as parents want is a vision for an improved secondary experience for our young people, and a strategy to deliver it; for these to be negotiated in public and to include our voice; and for those charged with delivery, some real accountability.

And I think we should expect better than mere shared aspiration from our elected leaders and their officers. Councillor Mitchell, Ms Tomlinson, can you do better?

Peter Martin, Bampton