I AM interested in Canon Lee School's incentive scheme for raising attainment with Year 9 pupils (March 7).

I am convinced that competition and co-operation are valuable lessons for pupils and the scheme embodies both.

However, I am not convinced that the cash incentives ("bribes" as one letter writer called them) embody the values that young people should be learning in our schools.

A love of learning and striving for your personal best and co-operating with others are of more value than a love of money. I worry that such incentive schemes are the slippery slope to pupils asking for such rewards for other school activities.

How soon before mercenary pupils will be asking what it's worth to turn up and play for the school team, or to attend a work- experience placement, or to take part in a musical production?

The insidious principle of materialism can be seen in this scheme, not a principle that should go unquestioned in any school's citizenship scheme of work.

I realise that the drive to raise attainment is linked not only to an individual student's progress but to Year 9 SAT pass rates, which are a significant performance indicator for schools in the league tables and consequently in the market place that is secondary education in York schools and elsewhere.

In addition, this performance indicator may be linked to teachers' performance management targets which in turn are linked to advancement on the teachers' pay scales.

Education by definition should be about "leading out" through learning, not indoctrination through such schemes into a narrow materialism.

Trevor Boag,

Northway,

Pickering.

Updated: 11:18 Wednesday, March 29, 2006