WISBECH Grammar School head Nicholas Hammond has attacked the Government for making education policy 'on the hoof or round some Hampstead dinner table.'

Mr Hammond claims that at times Education Minister Michael Gove's policies 'have lacked direction, indeed it appears we are following a course which has no map to guide us.

'Neither has it a compass to show the right direction of travel.'

The head's comments come in the introduction to this year's 136 page annual Riverline glossy school magazine.

'This year has been one in which there has been unprecedented change suggested in educational policy and very little revolution actually enacted,' he writes.

'We have been told that GCSE exams will change- they have a little; that A levels have changed but not as much as might have been expected, and that other exams need to be strengthened whatever really means.

'We face a government that appears to be making educational policy on the hoof or round some Hampstead dinner table.

'The fact is that students today are not in need of working harder: they think deeply, they take difficult exams and they demonstrate an extraordinary level of commitment to what they do.

'Mr Gove would be well advised to look around Wisbech Grammar School before making pronouncements about what it is our students do and of what they are capable.'

Mr Hammond, celebrating his fifth anniversary as head, added: 'We are explorers but it is not always clear what it is we are trying to find, or indeed where we are going.'

Current fees for day pupils at the senior school are £10,935 per year.

In a recent interview Mr Hammond said Wisbech Grammar School had 'great ambition and wants to play a meaningful role in the life of the local community.

'We are unpretentious, academically rigorous and we learn with an element of fun.'