BUNGLING education officials were branded dunces after sending a letter littered with mistakes to a Greater Manchester security guard.

Terence Miles wrote to the government's Department for Education and Skills expressing concern over claims that test results at some schools may have been fiddled.

But when he received a four-paragraph reply he was stunned to find it contained seven errors.

City education experts agreed the letter deserved a ''dunce'' grade. One leading headteacher said today that if a pupil had submitted the letter as a piece of work it would have been returned.

Mr Miles said he is staggered that such a simple letter could contain so many mistakes.

''It's no wonder half our children can't read and write if this is from the government department responsible,'' said 40-year-old Mr Miles, from Bury.

''I think it's absolutely disgraceful that the department can't send out a simple letter that makes sense.''

Among the howlers in the letter are the incorrect use of words, commas used in a random fashion and garbled sentences.

Commenting on the letter, Dr Martin Stephen, high master at top-performing Manchester Grammar School, said: ''If this were entered for an English language GCSE it wouldn't help the government's performance tables. It does seem a bit casual. Physician heal thyself, I would say.''

Dr Stephen said that if he were marking the script he would give it just five out of 10.

A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said: ''This department sends out 100,000 letters a year in response to enquiries and while the sense of the reply is clear we do recognise that it should have been well written. We will try to make sure that this does not happen again.''