Your article stated that "the government is ready to put evolution on the primary curriculum for the first time after years of lobbying by senior scientists" (Scientists win place for evolution in primary schools, 9 November).

Andrew Copson, director of education at the British Humanist Society, found this "particularly important". The plans, you report, come "in the wake of a recent survey commissioned by the British Council which found that 54% of Britons agreed ... that 'evolutionary theories should be taught in science lessons in schools together with other possible perspectives, such as intelligent design and creationism'."

As a former science teacher and schools inspector, I am disturbed that proposals for science education are based on near-complete ignorance of intelligent design. I also think the views of most British people in this matter should not be so readily set aside.

It is an all too common error to confuse intelligent design with religious belief. While creationism draws its conclusions primarily from religious sources, intelligent design argues from observations of the natural world. And it has a good pedigree. A universe intelligible by design principles was the conclusion of many of the great pioneers of modern science.

It is easily overlooked that the origin of life, the integrated complexity of biological systems and the vast information content of DNA have not been adequately explained by purely materialistic or neo-Darwinian processes. Indeed it is hard to see how they ever will.

In an area such as this, where we cannot observe what happened directly, a legitimate scientific approach is to make an inference to the best explanation. In the case of the huge bank of functional information embedded in biological systems, the best explanation – based on the observation everywhere else that such information only arises from intelligence – is that it too has an intelligent source.

You quote schools minister Diana Johnson, who says: "Learning about evolution is an important part of science education." If so, then thinking about what must have preceded it is also a legitimate area for science. The school pupil's question is always going to be: where did it all come from?

There is a tendency in school science to present the evidence for evolution as uniformly convincing and all-encompassing, failing to distinguish between what is directly observable – such as change and adaptation over time through natural selection – and the more hypothetical elements, like the descent of all living things from a common ancestor. The evidence for these various strands is not of equal strength.

If you insist that intelligent causation is to be excluded in the study of origins then you are teaching materialist philosophy, not science.

I believe current government guidance is wrong in denying intelligent design the status of science. However, it does encourage teachers to handle it "positively and educationally". That's a small step in the right direction.