A TEACHER of 14 years published a scathing letter to Michael Gove yesterday saying she was quitting her job because of his “damaging” policies.

Lucy Fey was hailed by other teachers after she said on social media she was leaving her primary school job over the government’s “huge” pressure on staff as well as pupils.

She said that the Education Secretary’s reforms allowed children “little time to be children. 

“How will all those talented people who are not necessarily ‘academic’ excel in their different industries if they were not given the opportunity to hone their skills throughout their education?”

She said: “I handed my notice in last week. I can’t do this to them anymore.”

Ms Fey argued that a narrow curriculum and increasing formal examination is leaving many young children traumatised.

The letter, now seemingly deleted from activist Facebook group Teacher Roar, also explained how teachers are made to work as councillors and social workers without pay or training. 

National Union of Teachers general secretary Christine Blower said that Mr Gove’s policies are “destroying teachers’ careers and lives and ruining education.”

According to Ofsted 40 per cent of teachers quit in the first year of their career.

“Teachers love teaching but are ground down by the long hours and stifling accountability regime,” added Ms Blower.

When approached by the Star, a spokesmen from the Department for Education was short on explanations. 

“We make no apology for expecting all children to leave primary school with a good standard of reading, writing and maths,” he said. “All the evidence shows that if you start behind, you stay behind.”

But Ms Fey insisted that the government’s obsession that British children “must compete with the world’s best” was damaging.

“They spend all day, every day struggling. Slowly feeling more and more like a failure, becoming more and more disengaged.

“Why are we not letting them grow as individuals? Why are we damaging their self-esteem and confidence by trying to make them all fit into the same box?” she added. 

Ms Fey’s letter comes less than a week after teachers and students occupied the DfE’s entrance lobby to read passages of US literature classics in protest against Mr Gove’s new GCSEs syllabus.