THE Government last night moved to ensure that a generation of schoolchildren is allowed to carry on spelling scientific terms the time-honoured English way.

It has ordered the exam body responsible for national science tests for 11 and 14-year-olds to drop plans to force them to use US-style "internationally standardised" versions.

Tens of thousands of pupils in England will not now have to write "fetus" instead of "foetus" or "sulfate" instead of "sulphate".

The change, ordered by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), aroused the ire of English purists and was condemned by politicians from all sides.

A QCA spokesman said schools were told in February that they should follow "international agreements on scientific nomenclature" when preparing pupils for the tests. But last night, School Standards Minister Estelle Morris said: "School pupils should use English spellings.

"I will be asking the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority to intervene quickly."

An education department spokesman said: "It's not appropriate to use Americanised spellings in national tests and we have asked the QCA to move quickly to ensure that standard English is used."

No pupil would be penalised for using the traditional English version of a word like foetus, the QCA stressed.

However, the Association of Science Education (ASE) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) both said teaching internationally recognised scientific spelling was essential.

ASE Deputy chief executive John Lawrence said that, for chemistry, they were set by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.

"It is not the upstarts from across the pond, it is the IUPAC," he stressed.

Asked why that meant a word such as foetus - which has no specific chemical meaning - had to change, he replied: "Pass."

The RSC said: "In 18th and 19th Century Britain it was common for sulfur to be spelt with either an 'f' or 'ph'."

But the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious science institution, was not among those gunning for the move.

"We don't feel strongly either way, but we can understand why there is a push to use American spellings because of the influence of US scientific journals," said a spokesman.