Paul Terry wrote:
In message , Richard
J. writes

The problem is that students in any subject other than English are
not penalised for poor language skills, so they never have an
incentive to improve those skills.

At A level, marks are allocated for SPG (Spelling, Punctuation and
Grammar) in all papers involving prose answers, whatever the
subject. This has been the case for many years.

That directly contradicts a report I saw recently in The Times which
quoted an A-level examiner as saying he was under strict instructions
*not* to penalise even gross errors of spelling such as "he would of"
instead of "he would have".
--
Richard J.
(to e-mail me, swap uk and yon in address)