Sir, – The D&S Times is to be congratulated for obtaining the secret report into problems at Richmond School when, clearly, neither North Yorkshire County Council nor the headteacher would like us to know anything about the scathing criticisms of them and which led to the mass resignation of governors last year.

There are still too many unanswered questions but the key one is "why did local education authority (LEA)officers disregard the concerns of governors and rush to protect their headteacher without even talking to those governors?"

A board of governors has a statutory obligation to monitor the running of a school and LEA officers have a statutory duty to maintain standards in a school and to apply proper scrutiny to its operations. What happened in this case is LEA officers being completely unprofessional and effectively sacking governors who were attempting to carry out their duties.

This situation deserves more than a colleague of those same officers producing a "lessons have been learned" report.

An independent enquiry is needed and for someone to be held accountable for this fiasco which has gone on for far too long.

HOWARD SMITH

Richmond.