Letter: Well versed in the new English curriculum

Sir: I resigned from the National Curriculum Council over the new English Order and congratulate James Fenton on his uncanny understanding of its workings. We were all over 45 and could nod in happy recollection at the titles for the books list because those were the books we had once read.

Angela Lambert has not read the new curriculum so closely. The features of grammar she admires are better described in the curriculum which has been in place for two-and-a-half years; the new one has been constructed for tests as if the Highway Code had been narrowed down to instructions on the three-point turn.

Yours faithfully,

JOAN CLANCHY

Headmistress

North London Collegiate School

Edgware, Middlesex

20 April