Letter: Two sets of rules for schools

READERS responding to my article on my granddaughter's schooling (Letters, 16 January) suggest that I said there were no good primary schools in this country. Of course there are. But it certainly isn't just Alice's that are not. I recently received a batch of letters about my children's books from 9- and 10- year-olds in north London. Most of them were writing at a six-year-old level - ill-formed print, no capitals, awful spelling, etc.

I don't see that writing properly and writing interestingly are mutually exclusive. Surely the techniques of writing are the tools whereby children can best express their thoughts. It's akin to the claim that if you teach children proper drawing and painting technique instead of just letting them daub and scribble, you are inhibiting them. This is absolute rubbish.

But the main point of my article was the question of whether government inspectors are using different standards to judge middle-class and working-class schools. None of your respondents addressed this.

Lynne Reid Banks

Beaminster, Dorset