WELL, what a surprise. It has taken them years to finally get there but Withins School has finally been threatened with being placed in "special measures" together with Deane school.

The teachers and staff at Withins and Deane deserve medals not brickbats.

Certainly both have long-lasting "poor" reputations, not necessarily deserved by either from a teaching point of view.

It is so easy for schools in local competition with Withins as they pick their students from the cream of Bolton. These same students are already academically capable, motivated to succeed and probably financed heavily from home.

It is no secret that the Withins area is, in general, socially and economically deprived in comparison with some areas of Bolton. A consequence of this is that life expectations, job prospects, ambitions and the motivation to succeed is somewhat lacking.

It is also no secret that teachers at Withins school have to work so much harder to achieve any success in the way of exam results.

What I can say about Withins is that both of our children went there. Both were very happy and blossomed socially and academically and achieved GCSE results far beyond those expected of them by myself and my wife.

Unfortunately Withins does not have a sixth form college so my daughter went to a local sixth form college where many of the teachers (not all) showed little or no interest in her well-being or her education and she subsequently underachieved at A-level.

My daughter went on to gain a 1st at Liverpool JMU and a Masters 1st with distinctions at a prestigious fashion college in Milan. My son also achieved similar results in his field of expertise.

Thank you Withins.

Sadly, from personal experience, the teachers and staff of Withins are about to receive very little help or money to rectify any perceptions of under achievement. They will however have unfair demands made of them. They will be inundated with paperwork and writing reports -- demands made, in general, by local authority education department advisors and Ofsted inspectors who are "supposed" to be helping Withins to progress.

The plans and schedules for school improvements will also be changed constantly. The pressure to prove that improvements are being made will be severe and to the extent that I suspect that sickness absence through stress-related illnesses will go through the roof.

Perhaps if the Government was to tackle the underlying problem of socially and economically deprived areas such as Withins then schools such as Withins will be able to get on with teaching pupils who will be motivated to succeed like their local competitors.

I have found Ofsted inspections to be a poor reflection of how a school actually performs for its children. I have also found that reputations, good or bad, of schools to be a poor indication of how they perform.

I question the results and validity of Ofsted inspections. Do these inspections actually fail to find failings in 'good' schools ? These failings do exist as I have experienced them first hand. More importantly do they find failings at 'poor' schools that are actually the symptoms of problems that have little or nothing to do with academic abilities or teaching in that school but have wider social implications?

Denis Hough

Down Green Road

Bolton