On October 29th, a BBC Radio Scotland program was running a competition in which people calling in were asked to spell ventriloquist and kibbutz (among other words, presumably); several callers with  older  voices'they certainly were not children'were unable to do so; does that mean that the Scots are to be excepted from the QES campaign  to compel all children to study formal grammar up to the age of 16  or that the rot set in long ago?