A punishment for no crime

ANTHEA MILLETT makes much of her following procedures "to the letter" and maybe she did. It is the TTA procedures themselves that are unjust and unfair.

They are designed to ensure compliance but they have nothing to do with helping organisations to improve.

LSU needed more time, as its visiting Ofsted inspection team acknowledged, and support to carry out the very considerable improvements that were rightly required of it.

The college decision against appealing to TTA does not imply that it agrees with the TTA judgment. It is spurious and wrong of Mrs Millett to suggest otherwise.

The TTA's hands-off approach to LSU's recovery has brought real damage to the lives of students and staff. It has created a high degree of bewilderment among the many schools which value their relationship with the college and their role in teacher training.

The college made considerable improvements to its courses, to its teaching and to its systems in the eight months it was allowed of its three-year development plan. It would cost the TTA nothing to acknowledge this.

John Coffey, Dean of education, La Sainte Union College of Higher Education