The weighty coincidence of Colin Richards’ letter and Helen Ward’s article (TES 24.5.02) regarding, respectively, the unreliability and stress that national tests often evoke is a timely reminder to the standard fetishists. This latter group, few of whom are classroom teachers, believe the legitimacy of testing is founded upon its delineation of actuality. How strangely misguided they are! Teachers who engage with and hence care for and understand learning are still forming the basis of the profession, despite the brickbats and nonsense of government policy. They rightly endorse the Betjeman view, speculatively quoting Oscar Wilde, that “Approval of what is approved of, Is as false as a well-kept vow.”
Tim Peskett, 36 Edinburgh Road, Northampton.