The rattle of the guns grew louder as we galloped inexorably onwards. As a shell exploded, Joey reared in fright but I galvanised him forward. My heart was in my mouth as I watched my friends dying for our country.

Suddenly, the ground erupted all around me. A bullet hit my helmet and ricocheted off. In the distance I saw the thing I had been dreading most - a tangled bush of barbed wire. With a sudden leap, I felt us soaring in the air as Joey leapt over the wire; then we were surrounded. My beloved horse was led off into the horizon until I could see him no more...

I read on with a surge of delight - this was what I went into teaching for. The author was 10 years old, the writing was inspired by a lesson on Michael Morpurgo's War Horse and the timing was perfect. I was about to head into a writing moderating meeting and for once I had a secret weapon - something to cut through the endless debate about semicolons and level thresholds. I proudly placed my ace on the table.

"Hmm," said one teacher, scanning the first few paragraphs. "Good vocabulary but I don't think she's punctuating at level 5."

"And I can only spot two types of complex sentences in the first three paragraphs," added another. "I think for a level 5 you really should be using a wider variety of clauses."

"But what about the way she engages the reader?" I said, my hopes evaporating. "There's tension and excitement here. It makes you want to read on and it makes grammatical sense. Isn't that good enough for a level 5? …