SIR.-I am an "extra-district" parent. I reside in Sutton Coldfield and I hasten to endorse the remarks of "Schoolteacher." I took up residence in this district 20 years ago and chances of Catholic education for Catholic children are worse today than they were in the early thirties.
The phenomenal increase in Catholic population of Birmingham was not taken into account when the Development Plan for Education was drawn up. Catholics have been pouring into this city since 1937, and it does not require a whole Committee of Intelligence to foresee that the Catholic young men and women who came here in the late thirties would marry and have children; and that their children would be ready for secondary education in the early fifties. This has come to pass.
"Extra District Parent."
SIR."Schoolteacher" in last week's issue of your paper gives a very accurate account, as far as it goes, of the state of our schools in Birmingham.
I ask you to let me stress one or two points: I. The large number of Catholic children in co-primary schools. I am a teacher in a county primary school and in one year I have discovered 50-and I do not go out to look for them. The "leakage" surely begins here.
2. The large numbers of Catholic teachers in county schools. It is difficult enough to obtain a post in a suitable Catholic school and it is almost impossible to win promotion in one.
-.Another Catholic Teacher."