Sir – Your response to the news that Year 2 pupils’ test results for Oxford schools are a few points lower than usual (Report, November 18) is a perfect example of how to generate more heat than light. And the response of councillor Waine does nothing to raise confidence in his judgment.

Councillor Waine’s first reaction — to decline to comment — was the right one. After all, the council’s chief officers are handsomely paid for professional advice, and informed comment from the education officer would have been appropriate.

Instead, councillor Waine chose to deliver a knee-jerk response of the kind politicians believe passes for intelligent opinion. Teachers, heads, schools, governors and parents were all blamed, and urged to try harder — and your own comments were equally unhelpful.

You demand to know “what the problems are.” The problems lie not in schools but in the nature of assessment and the diverse influences that bear upon schools. Any attempt to assess performance — of machines as well as people — is subject to statistical variation. In this case, I suspect the variation lies within the limits one would commonly expect, but we need to know the pattern of results over recent years. Without this information, no defensible opinion can be offered. Possibly, special circumstances such as class size or student background were a factor. A sensible response would be based on such an analysis, which the county’s officers should provide for us.

It is worth noting that reliably testing the performance of young children is fraught with difficulties and can be seriously misleading. It is a tragedy that such nonsense still prevails, at a time when the administrative load placed on teachers by Government interference seriously constrains their professional development.

Maurice Holt, Oxford