The Editor, Sir:

In response to Peter Espeut's piece on 'Education bias favours females (Part lV)', if you start with the wrong premise then your argument and/or conclusion will be skewed.

I don't think that because there are more girls' schools that the system is biased. What we need to realise is that by grade three we begin to lose our boys academically.

The word from the educators is that by age eight or nine we begin to see a widening of the gap in performance between the boys and girls.

We need to discover the reason why boys slow down at this level and implement strategies to help them to attain or even surpass the performance of the girls.

Increasing seats at schools will not make more boys graduate from high school. We need to find ways to keep them in school and performing. I, however, agree that we need major improvements in the education system, without which we are short-changing out children.

I am, etc;

MARIE JOSEPH

Kingston 19