Last updated 05:38, Friday, 19 September 2008

They’re back then. Some with smiles, some with scowls, some with new blazers bought for the growing into. A new school year has begun.

In my day that meant highly-polished new shoes – Tuf Girls, as I recall, deliberately misspelt because we girls never really were that tough... or polished.

Approaching winter meant gabardine raincoats, belted unflatteringly over blazer and bulkily around the middle; berets worn to display the school badge at all times. We waddled along in flat shoes and multi-layered clothing like a comical maroon marching army of Michelin men, under orders to arrive in class 20-minutes before morning assembly – in readiness for a random spelling test.

In all honesty I can’t remember there ever having been one. But fear of a 15-minute word challenge, slipping in as a surprise before a rousing two verses of All People That On Earth Do Dwell and a mumbled recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in our oak-panelled hall, kept us all on our toes ... and on time.

Pride in knowing ‘there’ from ‘their’ – and both of those from ‘they’re’ – counted for nothing against the shame of being caught in ignorance. We were grammar school girls and the only sins worse than wearing micro-mini hemlines, being spotted on a bus without the beret or forging a parent’s note to secure a skive from hockey, were bad spelling and the unforgivable misuse of apostrophes.

Inevitably there were to be worse tragedies in our lives than mistaking ‘your’ for ‘you’re’ or – God forbid – a slip of the pen turning out an ‘its’ in place of an ‘it’s’, but we didn’t know that then. In fact, I remain convinced former Wheelwright Grammar girls all over the world, in making assessments of their lives, will muse: “The divorce was tough; bereavement was hard; when the kids went off the rails and burgled that Brinks Mat place, the neighbours were beastly. But – oh Lord! – the wounding shame of missing an apostrophe in my note to the milkman!”

That’s just the way they made us.

In the reorganised, revamped, renewed school year that welcomed Cumbrian kids to class last week, nothing can have seemed quite so straightforward.

Quite apart from the little local difficulties and glitches – only to be expected when academies in the planning for months and years suddenly go live – there was recommendation for sloppiness creeping into ordered educational schedules.

A leading academic said correct English spelling was holding children back and should be scrapped in favour of an ‘anything goes’ alternative. According to John Wells, emeritus professor of phonetics at University College London, text messaging language would do nicely. There were more important things in life than the ability to sort ‘their’ from ‘there’ and ‘they’re’ he said.

Not many though! Good grief – this was enough to make an old grammar school girl shiver to the roots of her lacquered hair. But there was more.

“Let’s stop worrying if people sometimes spell you as u, your and you’re both as ur, and whose and who’s both as whos,” he said.

“Nowadays we often see light written as lite and through as thru. People should be able to use whichever spelling they prefer.”

And the sacred apostrophe...?

“A waste of time. Have we really nothing better to do with our lives than fret about the apostrophe?”

As long-sleeved blazers, skew-whiff ties and school badges line up at bus stops, it occurs that eager children are again being severely short-changed – and that always seems cruel.

Particularly unfair is that Professor Wells has had his education – at public school and Trinity College Cambridge, no less – and has done very well as a result. For him to dismiss today’s children as undeserving of at least the same standards is especially offensive.

Maybe there’s too much of the grammar girl’s slip showing but it’s hard not to call to mind some straight-talking advice given by an uncompromising English teacher. She was the old-style kind – inspirational, memorable.

“We all have to learn and it’s as hard to learn to do something incorrectly as it is learn to do it correctly,” she’d say. “Let’s learn to do it correctly.”

To the best of his ability, Prof Wells – multi-lingual published author, now reckoning any old gibberish will do for today’s learners – must have done that.

To the best of our ability, we did too – fretting over apostrophes, distinguishing their from there, principle from principal, advise from advice, whether writing essays on sexual tensions in Wuthering Heights or forging a note from Mum to seal a skive from hockey.

Would today’s learners feel similarly inclined? I’d like to think so – if only to show John Wells they really do have more to do with their lives than fret about a potty professor.