In Competition No. 2909 you were invited to follow in the footsteps of Michael Gove, who has urged civil servants to take inspiration from George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, Jane Austen and George Eliot, and submit a memo generated by either the Department of Education or the Ministry of Justice as it might have been written by a writer you would like to see Whitehall bureaucrats model their correspondence on.

It’s a squeeze this week, so I’ll hand straight over to the worthy winners below who earn £25 each. Brian Murdoch takes £30.
 

From: Under-Secretary Screwtape
Re: Stratification of Educational Assessment Procedures
Now that we have successfully imposed permanent assessment in all areas of education, His Satanic Majesty’s Service may congratulate itself upon a double impact: the irritation of all teachers at having to assess continuously not just pupils but also their own teaching (congratulations to our Semantics Department for ‘aims’ and ‘objectives’, which no-one has managed to distinguish); and the fact that in spite of frequent testing, no pupil is ever actually classified because this would be detrimental to their well-being. It is time for a new administrative level to ensure that the assessments are being properly assessed. Costs will be large, but the increase in general educational misery will outweigh this. There should be no difficulty in introducing these procedures: the souls of all political members of the department are of course already mortgaged to Our Father Below.
Brian Murdoch/C.S. Lewis
 

write not as dull rain sours souls (or ‘must’ Novembers May) but (knowing that to feel is better than to know), allow your heart to write what sense forbids;

know that to bravely split infinitives will impact passages (as dare is to refrain) by turning less to more and no to yes;

Change nouns to verbs and april grammar’s grey to gay.

rule ruleS by sCatteRing caPitals and hy-ph-ens where you will; a captive slave to ped

antry will never split a word and make a whole dance parts.

quicken prose that plods by linkingwordstogether just as when (upon summer-sunny day) kids like to runandrace.

Make foolery of all that wise men teach — Dickensian clauses cloud the sun and shroud what longs to shine.

As grows a field of gold (from sleeping grain) so words (untied from tethers) learn to live.

One letter altered transforms Gove to Love.
Alan Millard/E.E.Cummings
 
I am thinking that there has been a bundle of mistakes made when handling this whole educational business, and it goes without saying that our opponents made them in spades. But that is all over now Fat Dave and George the Goth have put the enemy through the mincer and we do not have to cut no deal with another mob, being as how we are now definitely in charge, though they loathe and despise us no little. So while all this is going on I am asking myself if the time is ripe to dispense with the horse feathers and come clean on policy. For instance: I am informed by some guys close to the centre of the learning trade that there are university programmes in such fiddledeedee as ‘Film Studies’ and ‘Media Studies’, and being of a traditional disposition this is not exactly music to my ears.
G.M. Davis/Damon Runyon
 
Department of Education: Geoffrey Willans
As your newly-appointed Sekretary of State, I wish to set out a few principals and gidelines so that you all kno where I stand.

Some poeple sa you shood kno speling and punktuashun and other rubish to get on in the world, but that is just old-fashuned snobery. These days, evrybode hav the rite to ekspress himself in any way he can. My grate friend Lord Peason at the Department of Culcher, Media and Sport sa this is democrisy in akshun, and the vital thing is to comunikate.

So let us hav no more filthy Latin or crule Algebrer, ect., in our skools. Instead, let us consentrate on teeching them that to sukseed in life, low animal cuning is more important than litterasy, and espeshally the many wizard weezes that ennable a humble (ha-ha!) allumnus of St Custard’s to bekum the multi-milioneer that I am toda.
Brian Allgar/Sir Nigel Molesworth, MP
 
To all Section Heads: What-ho. I’ve been punishing the old noodle trying to think up a decent name for us. After all, ‘Justice’ is rather a crushing word. Brings to mind Prometheus, Nemesis, sword of Damocles, that kind of thing. Not to mention ghastly disapproving aunts. Punishment, in short. Quite right, of course, we can’t be soft on the rotten element, but it’s a poor first impression and as my valet says softly softly catchee monkee. I mean, we mustn’t give the game away, what? Still, it’s dashed hard to find the right word. It’s given me some sleepless nights, I can tell you. Did think of Ministry of Niceness but it got shot down. Too lower-middle, I was rather cruelly told. I say, though. Just had a brainwave. ‘The Ministry of Love’. Now if you want something to warm the proverbial cockles that’s just the ticket.
Basil Ransome-Davies/P.G. Wodehouse
 
It is beyond contention that literature has supplanted religion as a source of moral reflection. But it has not uprooted the encroaching weeds of human folly. As an offence to the rational mind, Bardolatry in this secular epoch has replicated the religious veneration of St Olav’s cadaver. Shakespear — Shakespeare if you will — had a huge command both of language and contemporary stagecraft. But he was a man, not a demi-god. Intelligent but not intellectual, he did not engage with the social and political thought of his day. He did not see it as his task as an artist to improve the lot of his fellow creatures. If we wish to lay before young people ideas that may jolt them out of the ruts of pernicious convention we should set them to read not work encrusted with history but flowing with the current of modern concerns.
W.J. Webster/George Bernard Shaw

No. 2912: FAN fare

You are invited to submit a tribute in verse to a once-popular foodstuff that has fallen from favour. Email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by noon on 19 August.