Qualifying point

Tara Brabazon's article on teaching qualifications ("Blind sides", 30 April) misrepresents my recent argument in these pages, no doubt inadvertently. I did not employ a "piquant inversion of logic" because I did not draw the absurd inference she attributes to me that "a lack of (teaching) qualifications leads to good teaching".

I was addressing the Liberal Democrats' proposal to link teaching grant with teaching quality, which assumed that possession of a teaching credential equals good teaching and lack of a credential equals poor teaching. I argued, drawing on experience of some bad but credentialled teachers at school and some uncredentialled but good teachers at university, that having a PGCE does not in itself make one a better teacher than someone who hasn't got one. I suggested no more than that.

Richard Austen-Baker, Lecturer in law, Lancaster University Law School.