Ofsted should class schools as ‘outstanding’ if their students go on the climate strikes

Please send your letters to letters@independent.co.uk

Perhaps Ofsted should create a new category for assessing the quality of learning in our schools: “A school cannot be deemed outstanding if its students do not engage in climate strike action”.

Graham Powell
Cirencester, Gloucestershire​

MPs, rather than striking students, are the truants

With regard to the comments I’ve read that parents should be fined for the unauthorised absence of children from school for climate change activities, may I point out that the people who should be fined for absence are MPs? Less than 15 turned up for debates on climate change and bullying in the workplace and no Tory MPs for the latter – a bit too close for comfort, no doubt. And then we all saw Rees-Mogg asleep on duty; imagine what would happen to a police officer who did that?

R Kimble
Hawksworth, West Yorkshire

True public opinion

The scale of the climate emergency demonstrations is what the real “will of the people” looks like. World leaders and corporate magnates must now realise: we have you all under the microscope.

Name and address supplied

A look in the climate mirror

Millions of predominantly young people all around the world have made a powerful but peaceful protest, demanding that governments take urgent action.

As noble as this is, would it not be more appropriate for people to look at themselves and their behaviour in the first instance to affect change and to bring about a better and sustainable world?

Most of the protesters appeared to be fashionably dressed, most likely carrying the latest model of mobile phone, fortified by a nourishing breakfast, made from imported items.

How many of these protesters would willingly give up eating exotic fruit, strawberries flown in from Kenya, avocados flown in from Peru, wearing the latest trainers? Or asking their mothers not to drop them off at the school gate in the latest model SUV, the engine running to stay cool in the summer and snug in the winter? How many would willingly give up on their foreign holidays?

Our index fingers are exquisitely designed to point at others, not at all useful to point at ourselves.

Gunter Straub​
London NW3

The huge number of people who have been out demonstrating about climate change have presumably decided never again to get on a plane. Otherwise they are first class hypocrites and their protests are not worth one bucket of cold spit as President Johnson might have said.

Dan Hartley
Solihull, Warwickshire

Righting wrongs

As we, quite rightly, criticise those such as Justin Trudeau for impersonating those of a different race to his own, is it not time to outlaw the All Blacks rugby team for impersonating the Maori, the indigenous Polynesian people of New Zealand, in their pre-match Haka?

Colin Burke
Cumbria

Choice is freedom

I want to express my grave concerns about John McDonnell’s backing of a conference motion to abolish independent schools and even to strip them of their charitable status and sequestrate their assets.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights, parents have the right to educate their children in accordance with their own choice. It is one of the basic freedoms of this great United Kingdom and of the free world.

Independent schools provide that choice as well as saving the state millions of pounds.

This is blatant evidence of Marxism and Communism where everyone is reduced to the lowest common denominator. One assumes that Jeremy Corbyn will also back this motion when he should be condemning it.

Keith Birch
Derbyshire