Fine for David Cameron to tell Oxfordshire County Council leader-elect Ian Hudspeth that he and his colleagues “could do better” on education (Saturday’s Oxford Mail).

Also fine for Mr Hudspeth to confirm that “education would be one of his top priorities for the 2013 election manifesto”.

Has Mr Hudspeth forgotten that on February 14 the county council cabinet adopted a report which pronounced “the council’s support for the conversion of schools to academies”?

And Mr Hudspeth’s colleague, Melinda Tilley, for the moment (reshuffle/shuffled out perhaps?) Cabinet member for schools improvement, has been consistent and persistent in her championing of academies.

Both councillors will know that once a school has become an academy, it ceases to be within the orbit of local government and thereafter answers directly to the Secretary of State for Education (currently Michael Gove), so difficult to know what county council educational priorities Mr Hudspeth has in mind.

The council has also agreed to commission a report on the future of schools in Oxfordshire, at what cost and by whom have not yet been announced.

Possibly Mr Hudspeth and his colleagues envision a commercial/mercenary future for themselves in academies, free schools and university technical colleges in Oxfordshire, as providers of privatised HR and payroll facilities (etc), which would certainly be of a piece with the purblind way Mr Gove sees the world of education as a marketised commissariat (an oxymoron?).

BRUCE ROSS-SMITH, Bowness Avenue, Headington, Oxford