In your otherwise excellent hundred-year timeline I am surprised to see no mention of the 1963 Newsom Report: “Half Our Future” (“In the thick of it”, TES Magazine, September 10).

Those of us then at the helm in the secondary modern world, educating well over “Half” of that Future, may recall what a breath of fresh air that report brought to our task. For once we could look at the curriculum as seen by ordinary youngsters and seek to build on their interests and aspirations.

It was tragic that two years later along came CSE to pull us back into the world of exams, making us once again the poor relations of the grammar schools. Newsom-style teaching was exciting but it didn’t earn you that bit of paper. Now, with some of those non-examinable virtues being at last recognised, could we see a resurgence of all that John Newsom was urging?

Maurice Dybeck, Former warden, Sawtry Village College.