Dear Francis

I know people are reluctant to write to MPs because they think they are useless. Some are also reluctant to write because the union provides a standard letter which they might take exception to. It is also the case that MPs can ignore standard letters and an individual one is often more likely to get a response.

I have written to my MP as follows. You can use the NUT website to write your own letter.

Dear Francis,

I think that Mr Gove's humiliating climb-down over the ill-conceived EBACC proposals should act as a warning. I am writing to you as one of your constituents and as a retired teacher to ask that you write to Mr Gove to communicate my concerns and warn him of the hazards of his damaging proposals.

In particular, Mr Gove's insistence on "Performance Related Pay" is going to be damaging to the collegiate nature of teaching. It would be a shame if instead of co-operating with each other, teachers were forced to compete for scarce financial rewards.

Individualised pay decisions are very likely to lead to favouritism. The only way to prevent that would be an expensive interventionist micro-management of education which Mr Gove pretends to oppose.

With best wishes.

I don't know if he will take the "best wishes" as ironic or not. I note that my spelling checker thinks Gove is a mistake. I couldn't possibly comment.