I COULDN’T help but feel a pang of nostalgia when driving past Headlands School playing field to see the sign “Bellways Liberty Park” (sounds like something out of the American War of Independence … what was wrong with Headlands Green? Not the point of the letter however).

Tom Magson, my old headmaster would be mortified to see his life’s work not just snuffed out but entirely expunged.

Now he and I were not the greatest of pals, in fact one might almost say there was mutual antipathy (years later I came across the reference he gave to my first employer, based on which it’s unclear how I ever got a job!), but whatever my personal thoughts about him he was passionate about his school, ambitious for his students, demanding of his staff, a disciplinarian, a great manager and organiser.

Headlands was not only a grammar school, it was a great school, and whether comprehensive or grammar, it would still have been great under Tom Magson’s leadership.

Its decline began, not because it became comprehensive, but because his retirement (to become a country vicar) was swiftly followed by an exodus of all of the talented team he had built up around him.

Look at the strides being made at Nova Hreod today. The difference? Effective leadership creating a quiet and disciplined learning environment, committed, motivated staff and an ethos that identifies learning success as a goal worthy of achievement for all ability streams. Given this recipe it matters not whether it’s grammar, academy, free, comprehensive or whatever.

Although a product of the outdated grammar school system, I was never persuaded that casting aside 85 per cent of children at 11 so that the seemingly best 15 per cent could be creamed off and fast tracked to enjoy better leadership in selective schools, did that much for social mobility, social cohesion or was a fair use of society’s limited resources.

While public schools, with their small class sizes, highly paid staff and networking of contacts and influence, will always enable wealthy parents to “buy” an elite place for their offspring’s future, at least we can try to be fair and equitable with children from the 93 per cent of parents whose families are not the nouveau riche, the landed gentry or the establishment perpetuating itself.

JOHN STOOKE Haydon End, Swindon