The curriculum proposals put forward by the Cambridge Review are independent, far-reaching and beneficial - unlike those in the supposedly independent Rose review. They are being published after almost two decades of increasingly close governmental prescription. This has impeded initiative and risk-taking at local level and has reduced initial teacher training and continuing professional development to transmission - or, at best, mediation - of government directives.

The Cambridge proposals are challenging conceptually, politically and logistically. They raise a host of questions, including some related to professional development.

Unless these questions can be tackled by all those concerned to reprofessionalise primary teaching, English primary education may settle - as it has too often had to do - for second best. And the Rose proposals are just that.

Professor Colin Richards, Spark Bridge, Cumbria.