It’s fascinating to read of the opposition of both Tea Party activists and liberals to the US’s Common Core State Standards (“The battle for the common ground”, Feature, 5 July). In the English context it prompts two questions. Why have proposals from England’s education secretary Michael Gove for the national curriculum not met with opposition from a similar alliance of right-wing conservatives and liberals? Answer: because many of the former have children in independent schools or in academies where the so-called “national” curriculum does not hold. This prompts a second question. How then should the proposed English “national” curriculum best be described? Answer: as a “notional”, not “national”, curriculum.

Colin Richards, Spark Bridge, Cumbria.