While many welcomed the education secretary’s admission that the scrapping of GCSEs for replacement with English Baccalaureate Certificates was a “bridge too far”, the significance of the main factor that thwarted his ambition should give no cause for celebration.

Far from Gove’s U-turn being prompted by negative responses to the consultation, the awarding bodies have once again paralysed policy development by playing their “free market in examinations” card. I am struck by the complications caused in our national assessment system by the proliferation and influence of examining and awarding bodies.

I have never understood why the national examination and qualification system is left to the vagaries of free market economics. I find myself in agreement with Gove on very little, but if he suspected that rigour was lost and grade inflation was promoted by excessive competition between the main awarding bodies then he would have, at least, got something right. Unfortunately, either his or his civil servants’ distaste for even well-run national monopolies has got the better of his ambitions.

So it’s back to the 19th century and sterile, reductionist arguments about academic rigour and the primacy of a subject-based curriculum. In the real world, of course, young people are living in the 21st century.

Adrienne Carmichael, Kendal, Cumbria.