Pupils face penalties for bad grammar

It's only a twinkle in the eye of Ken Boston who heads up the QCA but it could come to pass. I predict some interesting discussion about what constitues 'good' grammar etc since what is really meant is the grammar of a particular variety of English with a hegemonic history. How much regional and social variation will be allowable? Unless we're going to come clean and state that what we want is that English school students should become bidialectal in their own regional or social dialects and also in 'standard English'. It also means making the case for that. I think that case can be made: it's about being able to communicate in a world language across Britain and the world without our regionalism or whatever being misunderstood. If we can't teach our kids to learn foreign languages let's at least make sure that they can use a variety of English that stands a chance of being well understood by the billions of English speakers across the globe.

It's okay in Australia where Mr Boston comes from: the dialectal variation is quite small but in Britain we're quite rich in regional and social dialects, many of them really are the first/home dialect. The challenge is to help those kids that don't really care, care enough. I fear though that if it is not approached carefully this can become yet another alienating factor between some children and the school system.
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