Dear Editor,

As a former teacher, I am an avid reader of E&L. However, I must register my amazement at your cover photo and caption, as well as a point of view expressed in Yvonne Healy's piece (E&L, February 27th).

Simply expressed, in this day and age it should be noted and acknowledged that every child has two parents!

Surely Tony Blair's wife and Harriet Harmon's husband have rights to maintain in the selection of schools for their children.

Caption: "The one he wouldn't send his son to".

Article: "Little Joe Dromey, son of the Labour shadow...".

Later: "In choosing to send her son..."

Later: "The decision by Tony Blair td send his son..."

I am not here expressing an opinion on the decision of both sets of parents. I am, however, making what I believe to be an important point to which some people pay merely notional assent.

While I am writing, I should like to make another point. Living as I do now in Belfast, I am amazed at the way some topics are treated as if Northern Ireland didn't exist. Education is very often such a topic.

Integrated education or non-integrated educations discussed in Dublin papers, but I have failed to notice a far more substantive topic: how the 11-plus manages to divide both Protestant and Catholic communities into parents and pupils with vested interests in "good" schools and "dud" schools. Another article I should like to see is on the state of comprehensive education/schools in Northern Ireland.

Again, my appreciation of Education and Living.

Brookvale Ave, Belfast.