As I read last week’s TES, I entered a surreal world where, for the first time, I found myself agreeing with Sheila Lawlor when she said that the proposed measurement of creativity in the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) “can’t be done” (“Pisa’s tests could get curiouser and curiouser”, 21 June).

But almost immediately I returned to my normal world: I was incensed by her contemptuous dismissal of curiosity as an “airy-fairy notion”. It is precisely “airy-fairy notions” such as imagination, initiative and intellectual independence that education, rather than test-tyrannised schooling, should be about. But don’t tell right-leaning Pisa enthusiasts. They will vainly try to measure them all.

Colin Richards, Spark Bridge, Cumbria.