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Sir: In your otherwise excellent Guide to Independent Schools (3 September), Ross Clark’s article on A levels and the International Baccalaureate contains some inaccuracies and misperceptions. He writes that ‘while the bac is good at promoting breadth… A levels are better at promoting depth’. This is not true: the three Higher Level subjects that students do for the IB are in many ways more challenging in content than their equivalent A2 subjects.
Furthermore, no modular examinations are offered in the IB, which means that exams taken at the end of the Upper Sixth require students to have learned and retained a deep knowledge of the subject. IB students then all have to write an Extended Essay of 4,000 words on a subject of their choice: our experience at Wellington College is that universities rate this very highly, because it provides students with the opportunity to do independent academic research which is not narrowly prescribed by a syllabus.
Ross Clark also repeats a canard that the IB does not stretch students who wish to specialise in, say, the sciences; but many IB schools have found their students who have studied science to be in high demand from universities. Most damaging of all perhaps is the claim that only lesser academic independent schools have adopted the IB. This might come as news to North London Collegiate School, Manchester Grammar and Cheltenham Ladies College (to name but a few). They, like Wellington, started it because it is a world-class qualification which prepares our students for an increasingly interconnected, internationalised world. Crucially, it has had zero grade inflation for over 40 years. Regardless of what Ross Clark might say, that matters — to schools, universities, parents, employers and, I would hope, to journalists, too.
Anthony Seldon
Master, Wellington College, Berkshire
Thrown overboard
Sir: James Forsyth, Charles Moore and your leading article all failed to mention the maritime contributions to Nato’s Libyan campaign (‘After Gaddafi’, 27 August). The Royal Navy has been playing a full part from the outset in initial evacuation of civilians and firing submarine-launched cruise missiles. Navy Destroyers have cut Gaddafi off from the sea and responded with decisive gunfire to rocket attacks from his forces ashore. Nuclear submarines have carried out surveillance and intelligence gathering as have Navy helicopters based with Army Apaches in the commando carrier HMS Ocean. American, French and Italian aircraft have operated from carriers with the Italian Harrier equivalents costing one tenth that of Typhoon sorties and one eighth those of Tornados. Both your leader and Charles Moore have it right in saying that the Libyan campaign does not prove the recent defence review correct in its running down of our armed forces. Nearly all the Navy surface ships whose activities are cited above are due to be scrapped by it. It is vital that the Prime Minister’s aspiration to increase the defence budget from 2015 be delivered.
(Vice Admiral) John McAnally
National President
The Royal Naval Association
Turning the Taleban
Sir: In my piece last week (‘The road not taken’, 3 September) a sentence was edited in a way which rather changed the overall meaning. Abdul Haq, the Pashtun rebel leader who I believe could have toppled the Taleban if the West had heeded his warnings on the bombing campaign, was aiming to convert mid-level Taleban commanders — not members of al-Qa’eda, as was printed. Had he succeeded, Afghanistan might look a safer place than it does now.
Lucy Morgan Edwards
Geneva, Switzerland
Thank you, fog
Sir: As someone who knows Bamberg well, I was fascinated to read Michael Tanner’s report of his visit to the city and its exceptional orchestra (Arts, 27 August). Tanner admits to being puzzled as to why, after so much damage inflicted on so many German cities by Allied bombing during the war, Bamberg should have remained almost unscathed. Well, there is a simple explanation for this, which I learned from a well-informed city guide.
Apparently, on the day Bomber Command had their orders to bomb Bamberg, the town’s protective patron saint Kunigunde, a statue of whom stands to this day proudly on a bridge in the city centre, caused the town to become enveloped in swaths of thick fog, with the result that the bombers were diverted at the last minute to Schweinfurt, 40 miles to the west. Thus was Bamberg spared — or so goes the local legend — and hence its unspoilt treasure of a city centre, all of which has since been, uniquely and deservedly, accorded the status of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Michael R. Ferguson
Berlin
Oily fish
Sir: I very much enjoyed Toby Young last week (Status Anxiety, 3 September), but he did not seem to realise that at Eton oiling is regarded as a despicable activity. Of course, he may be right to imply that David Cameron was good at it.
Stuart Wheeler
Treasurer, Ukip
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