Sir – Such hypocrisy from three Labour party members is astonishing! (Letters, August 19). Where were they when the city reorganisation was in the consultative and approval early stages in 2001?

The Labour-controlled city council gave tacit approval to the reorganisation and both Labour councillors on the then education committee voted in favour.

To claim now that the decision to approve academy status for Oxford School was made by ‘people who do not represent anybody in Oxford’ is hypocritical.

Public support, following consultation, showed no wish to reorganise yet was ignored. How naïve of your correspondents to expect it to be any different this time around. Those opposed to the city reorganisation were dismayed by the fact that only one plan was proposed for consideration.

There were clear alternatives, especially for reorganising the secondary schools, but were not presented for public consultation.

So to bleat about, ‘the council should have taken the opportunity to look more closely at how secondary schools in Oxford are organised . . .’ comes far too late.

The end result for the south east area of Oxford will now be two academies and a Catholic school to provide for the 11-to-18 year students. These are all ‘selective’ schools although no doubt they will hotly deny this. So if students are unable to obtain a place in one of them, where are the alternatives? Forget Cherwell and Cheney schools because they are already oversubscribed. Your correspondents, Malik, Tanner and Hutchinson, are playing a pathetic political game. They forget that there are people ‘out there’ with long memories and are only too aware of the damage political parties cause to children’s education. The families who live in that area of Oxford should place the blame for this state of affairs squarely on both the county Conservative and city Labour parties.

Martin Thomas, Retired headteacher, Temple Cowley Middle School

Abingdon