I cannot believe the dreadful standard of marking of the key stage 2 English-writing scripts that were returned to our school at the beginning of July.

Generally, in a cohort of 90 Year 6 children, we have between 35 and 45 level 5 writers. This year we have an able cohort of pupils who consistently display excellent, high-level writing skills - but we have just two level 5 writers, according to the marker.

On our careful scrutiny of the scripts, the marker is clearly wrong. Over 90 per cent of our children have been given a similar mark, resulting in a level 4, regardless of their writing skills.

Even though it is so very busy in school, we will now take the time and care to carefully scrutinise each script, marking each one properly according to the shared scheme. We will then resubmit the paper and hope that each child receives their correct and fair assessment.

The marker may be incompetent, lazy, badly trained or simply not up to the task. However, the consequences of his incorrect judgments on our pupils’ writing have had a massive impact on our hard-working school.

Junior school headteacher, Name and address supplied.