Michael Barber’s letter setting out his content-free vision as head of the new Office for Students (11 July) takes meaningless management-speak to a new level of baffling rhetorical vacuity. How interesting that until recently he was chief education adviser at Pearson, rightly pilloried this week for its ludicrous triangulation of the geometrically correct comma and semicolon (Straight commas lose Sats marks for primary children, 11 July). Presumably we can at least rely on his office staff to write flawlessly curly punctuation into the mindless memoranda that will doubtless flow from their pens. That will certainly safeguard our nation’s educational future.
Jane Caplan
Professor emeritus of modern European history, University of Oxford
• Is the Michael Barber who has just written to you about the Office for Students the same Michael Barber who wrote a book boasting that he had persuaded Tony Blair to impose on the public sector the mechanistic reporting regime that kept it from improving services? Is he still trying to fatten pigs by weighing them?
Gerry McMullan
Birmingham
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