As two retired professionals who spent a combined 80 years working in the NHS, we wish to express our anger at Simon Jenkins’ article (Professions, heal yourselves – only you can make the public sector better value for money, 23 November). The truth is that many professions have suffered from a huge excess of useless and hugely expensive reforms and calamitous policy interventions.
Within these professions, one huge issue is staff retention and staff shortages. Many within the professions suffer burnout, long hours, poor pay and complete disillusionment. Jenkins squarely lays the blame for the state of public services at the feet of professionals: the student loan fiasco is the fault of the universities; the backlog of delayed legal cases is the fault of the legal profession; the healthcare disaster is the fault of the medical profession structure; and the overemphasis on exams in schools is the fault of teachers somehow. The real culprits – politicians – get off scot-free.
All sectors acknowledge that some changes are always needed, but in our experience these professional-led improvements are frequently resisted by politicians, who prefer to put their faith in “market forces” and ignore common sense solutions. For example, our chronic shortage of doctors could be vastly improved by lifting the cap on medical school places, which was recently reimposed at 7,500 despite 30,000 applications. Instead, we poach doctors who trained overseas. Morally wrong and stupid to boot.
Until politicians learn to trust and value public-sector professionals, listen to them, fund them properly, and acknowledge their expertise, the dysfunction we see around us every day in education, the NHS and the legal services will continue.
Tim Pollard (retired orthodontist), Corinna Pollard (retired consultant in haematology)
Purley, London
• I must congratulate Simon Jenkins on his ability to provoke every hard-working – no, overworking – public sector professional in just one article. Teachers have no power to stop successive governments squandering money on vanity projects that have failed to live up to the hype.
The greatest efficiency savings could come from reducing government interference in the system. The eye-watering costs of introducing multi-academy trusts, with all the duplication of functions and excessive salaries at the top, could have been avoided.
The inspectorate has seized powers well beyond its function in compiling Ofsted curriculum research reviews (OCRRs) that are supposed to underpin its education inspection framework. If schools don’t teach what Ofsted deems to be high-quality stuff, their grades will suffer.
In what other industry does the quality assurance department tell the designers and craftspeople exactly what the product should look like? And in what industry would such an overweening department be allowed to set standards based on deeply flawed research? The profession’s subject associations and highly ranked researchers have protested vigorously against the methodology and content of the OCRRs – to be graded on research that is so seriously flawed is the ultimate insult.
Perhaps the worst side effect of the intrusion of an amateurish government into education is the impact on recruitment and retention. It does not take a human resources manager to identify the hugely expensive consequence of having to spend excessively on advertising, training and finding expensive agency staff to cover on a regular basis.
Perhaps the best efficiency savings could be to leave teaching to the professionals and downsize the meddlers.
Yvonne Williams
Ryde, Isle of Wight
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