I REFER to the ongoing Portland Academy situation.

I was a little surprised to read Professor Stephen Hepple’s claim that ‘we now have the whole island behind what I believe is a refined and even better bid’ (‘Delegation lobbies for academy’, Echo, November 1).

This presumptuous and slightly arrogant statement is somewhat at variance with the opinion of the governing body of St George’s Primary School.

This body remains very much opposed to the idea – as do many parents, carers, staff and pupils as it would see the enforced closure of this long established, happy and successful school.

I think the professor’s enthusiasm for his project is blinding him to the fact that far from the whole island being behind it, a good many people are far from happy at the prospect of having some ‘super-school’ imposed upon them without any guarantee that there might be a successful outcome.

Besides, if the proponents of this scheme have now come up with a refined and even better bid for less money, why didn’t they submit it in the first place? As the continuing saga of the academy rumbles on, three things we should be aware of in life are visionaries, experts and politicians.

History is littered with the debris of their meddling.

The first can see things that no-one else can see, the second profess to know things that no-one else knows and the others of course are blessed with a combination of both these gifts and can smell a vote at a thousand yards. Take away the rose-tinted spectacles and the jargon and what are you actually left with?

An educational model that few people understand, even fewer people care about and an alien, unproven structure of learning, which this country does not need and simply cannot afford to gamble on.

Furthermore, it is a system which has the capacity to extend and compound the failings of the dubious comprehensive experiment of some years ago. I very much hope that the powers that be in whose hands the fate of this project now rests, will recognise that it would be quite inappropriate to contemplate funding such a scheme in the current economic climate.

This is especially so when savage cuts to all other areas of the public domain are the order of the day and are likely to remain so.

James Creasy, Weston, Portland