A war of words has broken out after a headteacher criticised Oxford's three-tier school system.

Staff at Temple Cowley Middle School have denounced comments made by Alan Lane, headteacher of Cheney School, in an Oxford Mail article last week. Mr Lane put forward the case for replacing middle schools with a two-tier system of primary and secondary schools.

Temple Cowley School has sent Mr Lane a letter signed by all its teaching staff. A copy was given to the Oxford Mail. They are upset Mr Lane said results achieved by pupils in National Curriculum tests two terms after they arrived at Cheney were unimpressive, but had improved after a few terms. The letter said: "We were annoyed at the clearly- implied criticism of the quality of the work in preparing students for the key stage three of the national curriculum in years seven and eight. We know from the results of the tests over the past two years that our students achieve highly.

"Indeed, our headteacher, Martin Thomas, reported that you had congratulated us on the 1999 results of our ex-students." Mr Lane said he had not yet received the letter. "I don't want to comment on a letter sent from professional colleagues. It seems quite a campaign is under way and I don't want to be part of a campaign," he said. "I only made the comments when approached by the Oxford Mail."

Story date: Wednesday 10 November

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