Teaching methods | Holly stripped bare | Cricket in state schools | Flat Earth Society physics prize | Impact School of Motoring

As a retired teacher with family and friends who are still in the profession, I must take exception to John Harris’s assertion that our current method of education consists of “standing in front of 30 kids and shouting at them for an hour” (The right’s callous overdiagnosis bandwagon is rolling. Wes Streeting should not be on it, 7 December). At no point in my career would this have been regarded as an acceptable method of teaching any children, regardless of their individual needs or learning styles.
Jane Caley
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands

• Susie White was lucky to find holly with berries (Country diary, 8 December). The one in my front garden had had the inner berries eaten by wood pigeons some time ago, and now the rest have gone – after a flock of redwings took the ones at the ends of the branches that the fat pigeons couldn’t get to. Not a single flash of scarlet remains.
Copland Smith
Whalley Range, Manchester