Wonder of wonders: the Brits have decided to test all 11-year-olds on the proper use of verbs, nouns, adjectives and adverbs as well as prepositions and conjunctions. They are also to be taught to use punctuation marks correctly with a focus on full stops, question marks, commas, inverted commas and the dreaded apostrophe.
One would have thought all this would have formed the basics of any educational system. But it is evident from much that is written these days that such teachings have become considered passe and unnecessary. It is staggering to think that only now is such an idea being canvassed but, even worse, that it is being opposed by teaching unions.