The article “Sats teaching absorbs half the week” (TES, April 27) reminded me that in the late 1960s, even after the Plowden report was published, I used to teach intelligence to my fourth-year junior class. It didn’t improve their intelligence but it did improve the school’s 11-plus success rate. Happily, in most areas that nonsense disappeared with the abolition of selection. Unhappily, more recently it has been replaced by test preparation (a euphemism for examiner deception?) - equally nonsensical and anti-educative.
Professor Colin Richards. Spark Bridge, Cumbria