Below is a selection of comments left on the Hands Off Poetry! petition:

David Halligan: ‘I spent 24 years as HM Inspector of schools. English was my specialist subject. A ban on a poem because someone does not approve of its subject matter is fundamentally wrong. It is also based on a stupid view of teaching literature. One of the reasons for teaching literature is to enable pupils and students to experience controversy and to encounter aspects of human experience that are new to them. The purpose of an examination board should be to encourage good teaching and to raise standards, not to dictate what can and connot be read in the course of literary education.’

Alban O'Brien: ‘No understanding of the purpose of poetry. No understanding of teenagers. No understanding of teachers. No understanding of classrooms. No understanding.’

Signatory 278: ‘Whatever next? No more Dylan Thomas because it may encourage binge drinking? No more "Lord of the Flies" because it may promote antisocial behaviour and is blatantly "obesist"? ... We find, once more, we are merely suspects poised on the verge of doing the wrong thing unless direct intervention by responsible and upright administrators ensures our acceptable behaviour. ...’

Dr Anthony Wilson: ‘I am afraid that this decision is just one more example of the narrowness of mind which so frequently dominates so called debate about the space where arts and culture intersects with education in this country. The decision to remove the poem is one based on fear, and demonstrates a lack of faith in teachers, poets, poetry and the ability of young people to make up their own minds. It is therefore a decision which is against education in its widest sense.’

Rosemary McLeish: ‘the curriculum should not be censored. I was very shocked at some of the things I read for examinations in school (A High Wind in Jamaica, Lord of the Flies, to name only two novels, and many poems) - I was then and always have been grateful that such books were chosen to teach me about life.’

Nichola Deane: I have taught the poem to students in defiance of the ban and asked them if it should be banned. They thought the decision of AQA was stupid and patronising to them

Noel Williams: This is an appalling decision. It suggests that those making it actually have no understanding of the curriculum they are constructing, and therefore suggests that the principles on which the AQA qualifications are built are suspect, and possibly a different qualifications authority would be more enlightened. It suggests that bureaucratic simplifcation outweighs literary merit - or indeed any literary considerations at all. ... It suggests that the AQA lacks confidence in the professionalism of teachers and the critical abilities and social awareness of the children being taught. It sets up a terrifying precedent: all we need to do is find two people to complain, and any text and its concerns may be removed from reality by a paternalistic authority (why not remove "Charge of the Light Brigade" for its glorification of war and imperialism?)

Susan Gilbert: This invidious form of censorship is insulting both to the young people studying the curriculum and to the writers being studied. It is also potentially dangerous, art must address radical issues if it is not to degenerate into a banal, disgusted of Tunbridge Wells approved whitewash.

Harry Owen: As a former AQA English Literature examiner I deplore this act of academic and literary vandalism. If poetry can't ask questions of morality and human worth, what can? Reinstate this poem at once - and keep your neck out of anything smacking of censorship.

Ross Kightly : As a former teacher of English language and literature, I have always believed that a pretty much sacred obligation incurred by the position was to enable students to acquire the equipment with which to craft considered and rational responses to all forms of literary expression. For instance, by the end of Year Seven, I would expect most of my students to have grasped the concept of 'Persona'. This concept may be a tad too sophisticated for the Caffeine-addled sensibilities of AQA minions, but it seems to be one that makes a lot of sense to kids.

Jane Moss : If you ban this you might as well ban imagination.

Kate Scott : How can we learn how to tackle the difficult situations in life if we can't even face them in literature?

Mike Wareham: This is an asinine and contemptible piece of arbitrary censorship. The point has been well made that Romeo and Juliet is much more violent.

Janet Fisher : ... Trust young people. Use your common sense. Is it likely that anyone reading this poem would think knife crime a good thing?

Gerard Benson: Censorship is nearly always wrong. In this case it's also ridiculous

Jane Tozer : There's much nastier stuff in 'Wuthering Heights'. Who shall we ban next? Dylan Thomas for boozing; Coleridge for his laudanum habit; Blake for revolutionary thinking; Shakespeare's love pems to a youth? Marlowe & Byron deserve the chop for just about everything! Chaucer is already marginalised for being "too difficult". Soon we'll be left with nothing but Kipling's bloody awful 'If'.
Barbara M Smith: We must be vigilant in preserving freedom of speech. That this poem is by the poet laureate is also...worrying.

Niamh Downing: In an education system where: what might be regarded as the emotional abuse of children in the form of isolation units, and the use of CCTV to moderate and police behaviours are deemed acceptable, this decision is hardly surprising.

Gabriel Griffin: political correctness has become ridiculous, not to say extremely irritating and insulting since its use so often implies the recipient is incapable of autonomous judgement.

Sophie Mayer : ... Only totalitarian states interpret art literally.

George Szirtes: This is a gross error of judgment. ... It is the business of literature to understand and give voice to the difficult. Students hear voices much cruder than this and see fully graphic violence regularly on TV, in cinemas, and on games consoles. The poem has the great virtue of not being sensational. It is underplayed and very intelligent about the language of violence without being itself violent. Are people going to stop reading such poems as Browning's My Last Duchess and Porphyria's Lover because someone might be tempted to imitate the actions of the characters in them, characters who speak in the first person, just as the figure in Duffy's poem does? How much of Shakespeare - who is appropriately referenced- would they want to ban? This is such a rudimentary matter in understanding literature it amazes me that any sane, serious person concerned with education should think of taking the poem off the syllabus.

Alexandra Goss: Learn to distinguish between fantasy and reality

Arthur Duncan Cummins: What dreadful education AQA curriculum setters must have endured.

Padraig Rooney: Teaching English for 33 years: such censorship is a disgrace.

Jean Harrison: to censor reading matter derogates from the professional competence of teachers who are well able to handle difficult material with sensitivity.

Michaela Morgan: It is important that we do not give in to anti- education, anti-thought, anti-culture thought policing.

Naomi Foyle: If three complaints are enough to ban a poem, should not hundreds of names on a petition count for something?

Katherine Morgan: Bureaucrats are bureaucrats for a reason and shouldn't presume to interfere with culture.

Barry Tempest: If one of our main examination boards does not believe in education, the exchange of ideas, we are lost.

Paul Cornelius: Utter drivel, but should not be banned by Government-backed authority (unless seeking to pervert etc...)

Mandy Francis: When I first realised that the poem had been removed without any discussion with teachers, I engaged in a series of emails with my local, MP, Ian Taylor. Whilst I got a charming reply, I did not feel that he understood the full implications of what had happened. I find it ludicrous that something that has been on the syllabus for a decade, should on the whim of a non teacher, just disappear. I think that children can get a good education without the poem but for me it is the principle; will we take everything off the syllabus if someone complains? That way madness lies and the great book banning fests that seem much more common across the pond. I have always been heartened that most of the set examination texts have actually been banned (or still are) in some parts of the states. Literature (good literature) is a great teaching tool - don't let this be undermined!

Isabel Adomakoh Young: I studied this poem last year and felt no desire to commit a knife crime! I merely marvelled at her literary ability and savoured the composition of the poem, as I hope many more students will have the chance to do in later years.

George Quasha : Not only unconscionable, it's idiotic. How odd that people lacking basic poetry reading skills are in a position to control what gets read.

Geraint Edwards: This deeply depresses me. Banning poems does not make the world a safer place. It does precisely the opposite.

Jared Louche: This is exactly the sort of reactionary intellectual censorship that insults everyone by assuming that young readers have no sense of proportion, no capacity to grasp the distinction between reality and fabrication. Shameful and cowardly.

andrew freeman: The Hungry Caterpillar should be the next to go for promoting childhood obesity