What about all the mediocre parents? Do they not have any responsibility? And yes, I am a teacher. I am so tired of working all the hours God sends only to have jumped up journalists take another swing at my profession. Go and be a teacher for a week, then write your column. I dare you.

Laura, Edinburgh,

Simple idea, any family receiving any income from a government job, has to enroll their children in a government school (especially the pollies).

Think you might see a change very quickly then.

Alex samad, Rhodes, Australia

The last article I read before coming to this one was about employment and the difficulties of finding work for our unemployed. Could there be any connection do you think?

Peter Miles, Crediton, UK

Put me in class of 100 with a good teacher and I'm happy. Put me in a class of 5 with a bad teacher and my future is ruined. This would naturally happen if pupil, teacher and school were given free choice instead of arbitary placement or via manipulative rules.

Vouchers might be a good start.

Greg Lorriman, Leatherhead, UK

Your point around the simplification of real mathematical operators reminds me of a similar point brought up in the early pages of Edsger Dijkstra's manuscript "On the cruelty of really teaching computing science". Pop along to the archive at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ and read 1036.

Oli W, London,

In reference to:
"A seven-year-old state school child....kisses all over the paper?”

Just so 'we are all on the same page' * is the 'new' x, or that's what my 10 year old twins tell me!

Kelly, Vienna, Austria

Another round of redefining failure as progressive education and of ignorance as creativity. Leftist educationists are preparing the nation's children for life in caves . . . just in time for the onset of the next Ice Age.

Quinx, Nottingham, England

Not to worry. They will still get into University.

b.davies, newcastle, uk

Let's see. Back in the 1960s Wilfred Hyde-White and Richard Murdoch were cocking things up royal as The Men from the Ministry on BBC Radio. Then there was Yes Minister on BBC TV.

Why should we imagine that today's real life Teachers from the LEA would be any different?

Christopher Chantrill, Seattle, USA

The development of the British school system (demise of grammar schools, irrelevance of spelling etc) since the 1960ies read like a recipe for precluding social mobility with maximum efficiency.

krishna, Oxford, UK

I taught at a good Grammar School in the 1970's and then spent thirty years in Industry. I returned to teaching four years ago and have been appalled at the way children from primary schools seem to expect to play rather than to work. Trying to teach science to mixed ability kids is a hard job.

Hugh Leader, farnham, UK

Two examples: Teaching basic operations.(+-*/)and equivalences including tables/ratio and proportion is a technical skill.Similarly the teaching of sight words and phonetics.Having been described in my early life as agoodinspirationalteacher. The classroom secret is Attention to detail and routine.

rwn, muston,

Its all about the ruling classes keeping the working classes down. Its a bit dangerous to have an educated population. Very victorian ideals!

I bet they don't have the same problems at Eton and Winchester?!

james, Brisbane, Australia

An excellent article, thank you.

Charlotte, London,

I'm fed up saying it, but your ruling classes, whether Labour,
Conservative or Liberal - except for inner city diehards - PAY to have their children educated. They're not going to give you the same thing for nothing. Ah, but you pay taxes? So do they.
Somebody needs to think again.

John Carty, Medellin, Colombia

Sorry, what`s your point, exactly? You veer between criticism of the curriculum and policy makers, fairly pointing out how difficult this makes teachers' lives, then target teachers as incompetent.
I think you're onto something with curriculum, but surely the teachers are a separate issue?

Colin Young, Nagoya,

What an excellent article. As the recipient of 1970s/80s state schooling, I weep to see that the old nonsense is back.

If the children could do no more than read, write clear sentences, remember times tables and apply basic maths they would be in the right place.

Is that so hard?

P Orrell, London, UK

I wonder if there will any teachers left to teach. Parents will then have to teach their own little victims of poor parenting!

maddy, ,london,

There was one line in this article I loved: "good teachers do not hide behind jargon". That's true of any profession, though. The rest of this article betrayed a common misconception - that teaching children is easy. Reading is a mass of complex processes, and the jargon simply describes them.

Philip S., Toronto, Canada

You criticize the Rose report and a 'chilling Ofsted official' and then somehow say this means teachers are incompetent. I don't think using the word 'literacy' instead of 'reading' really counts as incomprehensible verbiage. Shouldn't journalists use logical arguments, even in the Murdock press?

Glen, Melbourne,

We get mediocre schools because we have mediocre government. Mediocrities dislike being shown up by those brighter than themselves, so they surround themselves with the like-minded. Hence Ed Balls for children, and Sir Jim for a ridiculous report that rmisses the point - good quality teaching.

Jean, London,

I worked in some 40 schools in the South East as a supply teacher. One of the main problems is having any kind of control over pupils in order to teach them. Most efffective sanctions have gone & many parents, mostly single, cannot help, or obstruct. We need pupils fit for work & life.

Chris Stuart, Carentan, France

The last section, about box ticking, is entirely accurate. My computing teacher - I'm currently doing my highers in Scotland - still puts up 'OLIs' on the iWhiteboard. Yet she doesn't even cover them.e.g What are NMIs? Then she goes on to gibber about some irrelevent junk, having ticked that box.

Michael, Scotland,

Children in the UK are the top performers in Europe in Maths at aged 10-14 according to a study released today. We must be doing something right. Teachers are an easy target in a country where everyone thinks they know more about education than those trained and experienced in its delivery.

helen, Birmingham, UK

Content is dead for most of our "leaders". They just deploy the right combination of words to construct a script that has the right high-sounding tone. It is no longer necessary that it mean anything. A senior manager who can express a clear thought is a rarely sighted bird.

Jamie Gilmour, Bolton, UK

It seems Government advisers are like bad managers: they spew out unnecessary jargon to make themselves appear clever and disguise their general cluelessness. And the really frightening thing is they tend to get away with it and get taken seriously.

Chris K, Cheltenham, UK