SIR – New statistics show that about 70 per cent of all GCSE candidates achieved A-C grades (T&A, October 21).

A week earlier, the incoming chief inspector of English schools promised to improve standards by closing failing schools and sacking ineffective teachers.

This means that the less-academically-gifted must somehow improve their performance to save their schools and their teachers’ jobs.

Sir Michael Wilshaw’s tough talk might impress his political masters, but, like many before him, ignores the fact there are some children – however hard they try – who will never reach the standard set by the most able.

To pretend otherwise perpetuates the institutionalised cruelty which derives from an education system driven by performance indicators alone.

When I was conscripted in 1955, about 14 per cent of all recruits could barely read or write, but in those more compassionate, less competitive times, those young men were valued for what they could do rather than what they couldn’t.

As poet George Crabbe wrote in 1807: “How strange the hand that guides the plough should fail to guide the pen. For a half mile the furrows even lie. In half an inch the letters stand awry”. Then as now, skill and education are not equivalents!

Brian Holmans, Langley Road, Bingley