What a creative and imaginative idea: parents taking their children out of school for a day to enjoy learning together and, in so doing, making a gentle protest against an increasingly OFSTED-driven, SATs-obsessed and narrowly focussed school curriculum.

I'm sure the children in question will learn much more from an activity day in Kendal's Serpentine Woods or Grasmere park than they would from yet another day on the assessment treadmill.

This is not in anyway to disparage the work of teachers who - against all the odds - do an excellent job of inspiring and supporting young people.

But I'm sure that they - as well as their pupils - are heartily fed up with the centrally imposed assessment regime within which they are forced to operate.

Professor Jon Nixon

Kendal