No actual blood was spilt in the War of the English Order, but there was plenty of hand-wringing, professional bruising, resentment and trench-digging. Our archivist might well be bemused while reviewing the document. On the surface at least there will have seemed, like Jenkins’s Ear, so little to argue about. So much for the 2020 vision of hindsight. What about us then - the veterans of the conflict?

In the coming months many of us will sense that the more we mutter on and repeat the well-worn complaints about “Why only Muriel Spark?”, “Why not language study before Standard English?”, “Why not list the initial reading skills in alphabetical order?”, the more deafening the silence becomes. Like it or not peace, at least partial peace, has broken out.

The most striking contrasts between the existing and the proposed Orders are in the way they are meant to be read and in what they are intended to do. Where the authors of the current Order seemed concerned with marking out the boundaries and the definition of English for the future, the new version is as much a response to that process of definition as it is a reaction to political pressures from outside the English-teaching community. This document is reflective, not illuminating. It reflects the scars of a series of battles that for now at least are compromised.

The flurries and neuroses that followed the introduction of the first Order are neither appropriate nor necessary this time round. Let’s hope that we have all become less literal readers. We should read and respond to the gaps and the silences in this Order rather than scurry about attempting to locate and meet the letter of its law. We have surely learned not to ask questions to which we expect unpalatable answers.

One of the delights of this document is the degree to which it is self-referential. In contemplating the English battlefield of recent years and in offering advice to readers and teachers of this new Order, we cannot do better than quote the document itself. Simply transpose “teachers” for “pupils”.

”. . . pupils should be taught to identify the major elements of what is being said, and to distinguish tone, undertone, implications and other indicators of a speaker’s intentions. They should he taught to notice ambiguities, deliberate vaguenesses . . . (PoS Speaking and Listening, key stage 34).

“Pupils should be taught ... to extract meanings beyond the literal, explaining how choice of language and style affects implied and explicit meanings” (PoS Reading key stage 34) Ironies abound and it is tempting to see the text of the Order itself as an exercise to develop teachers’ advanced reading skills. However, here are some reasons to be half-cheerful: 1. Much has been achieved since the introduction of the current Order which these proposals should support or, at least, fail to hinder significantly. The development of school and department schemes of work, the growth of shared planning, planning for complete key stages and the interest and enthusiasm which teachers have brought to the requirements to give equal weighting to speaking and listening and to teach knowledge about language are examples of these assured gains.

2. The proposed Order is structured clearly and helpfully and, importantly, it looks manageable. These proposals need not provoke a frenzied rewriting of schemes of work developed for the current Order. Simply checking our provision against these proposed programmes of study should, for the most part, be both sufficient and straightforward. The coherence of the structure will help teachers as they come to plan new topics and units of work which integrate talk, reading, writing and language study.

One obvious danger within the generally familiar landscape of the proposals is the temptation that we may feel to ignore its strengths through initiative-fatigue or in the belief that if it’s shorter and simpler than the current Order then we must be doing it already. We should beware the development of a “feel-numb factor”.

3. Now that the dust kicked up by the real books campaign seems penetrable, if not entirely settled, the Order’s call for a “balanced and coherent programme” should meet with the approval of most teachers of initial reading even if the order (sic) of the key skills still offends.

4. Ironically, the range of reading might prove most challenging where it is defined with less prescription - in KS 1 and 2. Nevertheless, the reading demanded at all key stages should, eventually, encourage us, help our pupils and outlast the justifiable groans at the provocative and thoroughly debatable qualifiers such as; “major”, “high quality” and “classic” with which the programme of study for reading is peppered.

The prescribed reading lists remain and they are still controversial. The best comfort in considering them may be found in the way teachers and pupils have responded to the KS3 Shakespeare challenge. All that I have seen in Rotherham schools suggests that the plays have been taught with enthusiasm, knowledge, sensitivity and imagination. For many pupils their Shakespeare study has been the highlight of the key stage. They know the plays well and they have had their notions of Shakespeare and “boring” redefined.

5. Two cheers at least for the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority for restoring references to information technology and media education, improving the statement relating to pupils for whom English is an additional language, and beefing up the references to drama in all key stages. We should withhold a cheer for the fact that no teacher appears to have wanted the Order revised in the first place and for the fact that the use of level descriptions is still unclear and some of the descriptions still look worryingly over-demanding - level 3 Writing, for example.

It is unlikely that the introduction of the Order will provoke the hysteria that greeted the first version. I certainly feel a sense of guilt for the hours of in-service I helped devise and dump on half-willing roomfuls of teachers between 1989 and 1991.

So many courses began with the intention of stressing the programmes of study and the non-statutory guidance and so many hours later we left our bruised and bemused colleagues with the clear impression that not only did they have to teach every statement of attainment but they had to attain, retain, assess and collate the evidence of that teaching and learning forever.

This is my guilty part in the War of the English Order. This is what I did in it. I accept the charge that I contributed to the fate of the victims of that war. They were the trees, of course, the time that’s been wasted with nonsense like the infamous “N minus one”, and those experienced, effective, modest teachers, especially in key stages 1 and 2, who either felt that they couldn’t cope with it all, or really couldn’t.

* Mick Connell is Rotherham’s English adviser