Poor English in school letters

[Jotmum]

The letters that come home from my children's primary school are littered with basic errors. In a quick skim of today's letter from the head teacher, I counted 11 simple punctuation and grammatical mistakes. It is rather disheartening! Does anyone else have this experience?

I'd send it back to the head teacher with the mistakes circled in red pen

Yes - we had a very good head but she did make quite a few errors in letters and other documents. She left and now we have an even better head (a man this time) and he can't spell or punctuate perfectly either. I've never counted the errors but it's probably less than 11 in a single document so perhaps not the problem that you have.

God, it's dreadful and so embarrassing! But standards in grammar and punctuation are definitely slipping everywhere, one day no-one will even notice mistakes

ok 2 points - firstly - it's probably the school secretary - rather than the headteacher who has made the errors.

2ndly, my headteacher at school (who was also the main English teacher) was APPALLING at spelling, grammar etc when writing stuff out.....but was a fabulous English teacher and picked up on all our errors

being appalling at spelling and grammar and being a fabulous English teacher is most definitely an oxymoron, IceQueen!

Or is it a paradox? Or a contradiction in terms?

I suspect that the head's errors in our small primary school are all his own and not those of the office staff.

tell the secretary, i would. some school secretary's are like dr's receptionists.

Icequeen - OK take your point however anything like this that comes out of an organisation is reflection of that organisation. I would be surprised if the head teacher of a school didn't review letters that were sent from them. Certainly I wouldn't sign anything that I hadn't reviewed first.

I must add however that I know my grammar isn't very good (only C grade at GSE) so please don't pick my post to bits .

Aintno, your English is exemplary but do you mean GCE or GCSE?