SWNS
A schoolgirl has taken Education Secretary Michael Gove to task over errors she spotted in her SATs exam paper.
Rebecca Lee, from Christ Church School in Bristol, wrote to Mr Gove after finding three mistakes on her Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar test paper.
"I understand that you are very keen for us all to learn our complex sentences and use of accurate punctuation," she wrote. "I believe that your department should also use the correct punctuation in all SATs tasks."
The hour-long paper was made up of a 45-minute grammar test and a 15-minute spelling test. As she read through the exam, year six student Rebecca noticed that the text in the paper she was given for the spelling part of the test did not follow the rules of punctuation that were laid out for the grammar section.
Children's newspaper First News says that all the test papers used in last week's SATs contained the errors.
It reports that Michael Gove is yet to reply to Rebecca's letter, and that he refused to comment when approached by the paper last Thursday.
Labour's shadow education minister, Kevin Brennan, told First News that 'yet again, Michael Gove has been exposed as Mr Sloppy'.
"He needs to send out a better example to children by making sure the tests his department sets are grammatically correct," Kevin Brennan said, adding that it was 'pretty basic stuff' and that 'the Education Secretary must do better."
The errors centered around the grammar and punctuation test requiring children to put commas at the end of clauses in complex sentences, but the papers handed out for the exam did not follow the rule.
More on Parentdish: Why can't our children spell?