Bring back selective schools. Pupils need something to aim for. Right now there is nothing in the state sector to propel primary pupils - the SATS results are for the benefit of the teachers and the school, not the pupil.

What encouragement or motivation is there for the pupil? In most cases they know they will go to one of the bog-standard comprehensives at age 11 and it will make no difference whether they have achieved above or below their capability.

MarkS, Leeds,

To Nancy in London, don't be silly - You are practically saying to get rid of blackboards from schools. PowerPoint is billion times better than chalk and blackboards, plus everybody will be able to read what has been written on screen. You just need to learn how to use PowerPoint better.

Jamie, Preston,

PowerPoint is the problem? Why is it that a poor craftsman always blames his tools?

PowerPoint is only a tool. It allows you to organize your arguments in the form of an outline, together with (one hopes) a relevant illustration.

Computers can check your spelling and flag your grammar, but they cannot help if you have nothing to say. And they are useless for oratory. That's why the gifted, extemporaneous speaker draws a crowd, and a monotone drudge reading from a script while making a PowerPoint presentation does not.

peter, Miami, USA

The English psyche seems to have an inordinately deep-rooted affection for institutionalised mediocrity. Not until the pursuit of excellence becomes the primary goal of education will there be any hope of improvement, and at present, I see no sign of it.

Nicholas Lee, Windsor, UK

A few years ago I was called into school for an appointment with the head and class teacher, they informed me that my sons reading was two years behind, I then asked them if they had called me in to apologise for their failing since he was attending their school. They both looked at me as if I had come from space and did not get the point. The problem with teachers and staff is that everyone and everything else is to blame for their failings.The reason it was discovered that my son was behind was that a new teacher had arrived and carried out an assessment, which really was on the last teacher.

Dave Madley, Poole, Dorset

The thing that's destroying English is PowerPoint. If ever there was a tool designed to destroy the beauty, the rhythm, the power of our language, the ability of a single person with an irresistible idea to stand before a crowd of strangers and move their hearts and their minds with elegant argument, irrefutable logic, lighter-than-air metaphor, it is this plodding, stupid, under-ambitious tool of the devil. Wipe it out! Wipe it out!

Nancy , London,

Well said. I agree with every sentiment and every word.
Will the educationalists though?

david cooper, aylesbury, bucks

To John, Borehamwood - what are you doing John?? Don't pay an annual fee for the alarm system, just stop that. Don't bother with library cards, the kids are all in the system, you know who they are. Don't for god's sake pay poets hundreds of pounds, forge links with the kind of people who would come to a school to speak for free/some other benefit to themselves. Blame the government if you want but try to be a bit sensible with the budget you've got!!

Rachel, Libraryland,

Martin you have it in one
Parents are becoming concerned what state schools are delivering
Too many lessons dont start on time due to disruption by a few. They end early as the disruptive get ready to ruin the next lesson

What did happen to Education, Education, Education?
- has it all got too hard to deliver?

John, North Yorks,

The MR Jones Liverpool comment is a joke, right?

Eric, London,

It's easy to demonstrate its tosh - look at private schools. Literacy standards there are as high as anywhere on the planet despite the (supposedly) wealthy parents being able to provide far more distractions than the (supposedly) disdvantaged who send their children to state schools. And almost anyone can learn to read, so its not down to private schools creaming off the intelligent. The reasons are simple - synthetic phonics and focus on ensuring the children learn the basics.

Tim, London, UK

Does art reflect life, or life reflect art?

The age old question.

Watch the news any night of the week and you will see more violence and depravity than in any game on the market.

Does art reflect life, or life reflect art?

Mr Balls doesn't know the answer. Which for a minister in charge of education, is pretty funny.

Bill Bird, Wallasey, Wirral

Hi,
Computers are certainly not to blame for poor education standards on the contrary computer literacy is an important part of education whether learnt through computer games or word processing. As a docent I have learnt motivation is an important part of education. Teaching the to be learnt to ask questions is very important.
Regards Dr. Terence Hale Zandvoort

Terence Hale, zandvoort, Holland

I Have to agree as some one who works in a school it is not that there is not the time, but that it is used up by special needs childreen who are put in main stream by missguided parents and goverment.

Also the fact that schools now lose money for permently exlcuding children simply means that violent childreen are a lowed to interrupt and distroy every lesson they are in, bbecause the schools will not expell them less they lose precious funding and status in the god awfull leage tables.

What we need to do is abandon this idea that all children are equal and academic some children would be far better off learning how to be a brick layer, not only would it be more benfit for them, it would be a benfit for the rest of school children as they would no longer be there causing cachaos.

MR Jones, Liverpool,

I dunno about the Nintendo but I was called into school to discuss my son's poor attitude. He was reading books during the literacy hour.

Annie, West Yorks,

One of the reasons Russia is no.1 is because of the emphasis on discipline.The children are also well acquainted with learning reams of text off by heart, and not only Pushkin. I will never forget a taxi driver quoting Byron in English to me. Can you just imagine an English child quoting Pushkin in Russian?
There is also something to be said for the relatively much slower impact of capitalism and thus consumerism on the Russian culture. Up until recently, they only had books and theatre to amuse them. Not unusual to bump into people on the metro reading books, books, books.
You may ask why then they were only 16th five years ago and not first. I would imagine this reveals more about how quickly other countries have been tainted by creeping consumerism thus they are getting worse, just like the UK is, allowing Russia to come to the fore.

Alice, Hove,

Politicians have wrecked education in England. we spend £1 billion a week on a system that could probably work well with 30% less spending and far fewer job titles.

Maybe school fees for everyone with a scale based on income and rigorous selection both within and between schools to make Work an Ethic once more and prevent those parents who despise education from propgating their values so successfully.

This system is a disaster and is now a National Education Service run by Whitehall with a few party cronies mopping up the Training, PFI, Consultancy and Ofsted contracts.....Mrs McNulty

TomTom, Leeds, England

A very Fair point, also some of the more popular computer games of all time are ones which involve quite a bit of reading. My Example being the Final Fantasy series. in which you read what the characters are saying to each other. I also remember hearing on the radio a few years back that GCSE exam markers were being told not to mark candidates down for them spelling words the way they would in a text message, ok I was thinking that is bad but not that bad, then they said it was for English literature exams. I mean, that is the reason children in the UK have bad language skills rather than blaming it on a computer game.

Tom G, Epi, Cyprus

I'm sure its more important to learn Polish Christmas carols or to be able to empathise with a Roman galley slave than to be sat down and allowed to read a book.

Alan, Milton,

I work in a school library.
We have a budget of £3,000 a year. It costs £350 to bring in a poet for the day. We pay £200 a year to service the system that stops books being stolen. We pay £250 on the service contract for the library software. We have to buy book jackets, bar code labels, library cards, alarm tags, book repair tape, even our own pens.
When all this is taken off, we have precious little for new books. and rely heavily on donations, or books salvaged from schools closed for poor performance.
I blame the government, and the parents.

John, Borehamwood,

Computers may well be part of the problem but from my experience of helping at my local junior school I'd say that disruptive pupils and large classes are the real reason for poor attainment.

Inclusion of pupils who are violent into many classrooms has to stop, more special schools places need to be found and the staff need to be paid danger money.

VJay, London,