Scrap PGCE, save BEd

So primary teaching yet again is seen as being unimportant and not worth funding ("Future bleak for four-year BEds", THES, September 17).

How blind can we be? The very foundations of our education are set in the primary years.

Primary teaching is a specialism in itself and should be treated as such. As someone with 23 years' primary teaching experience, four years of BEd school placement supervision experience and two years' lecturing to BEd and PGCE students, I suggest that the primary PGCE be scrapped and the BEd be restructured. The BEd needs to be a professional primary teachers degree, without the need to specialise in one subject area for two years as now. The full degree needs to be dedicated to developing knowledge in all National Curriculum subjects, in child development and in the learning process. All this cannot be crammed into a one-year PGCE.

Petrina Stevens Sherington, Bucks