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Much publicity has been given to spectacular failures in quality control by institutions that have only recently become autonomous of local authority supervision.

TVU and Wigan and Leigh colleges ("Damning TQA report for Wigan", THES, May 28) demonstrate failures in management in a sector where accountability rules are only slowly emerging. Their strengths are less publicised.

Quality procedures and early warning of management failure must be preferable to a return to an elitist system.

Heidi Grainger

Department of sociologyUniversity of Liverpool