As a well known Educationalist and Psychologist I find on returning to the UK after a five year sojourns in Cyprus that standards in primary schools have not risen but in real life fallen in this period. I say this as a practising Educational Psychologist who has tested children in the UK throughout the last thirty five years, the Governments claim of rising standards is a myth, the results I see do not substantiate this in the least.
Until we get back to some basic skills in primary school teaching nothing will change.The new teachers need less training in political dogma and more practical hands on skills in helping pupils learn.

Dr M A Phillips, Paphos, Cyprus

This is very worrying when some of our European counterparts have a 100% literacy rate. The children are in school for 6 hours a day and we can't teach them to read and write? What is the government doing to help this? More testing, so that the teachers have to prove that they are doing thir jobs! I take my hat off to the teachers that have to meet targets and deal with difficult paents etc when all they want is to teach and make lessons fun.There must be more emphasis on reading , writing, science,maths and physical education, these basics is a most have, not learning about ancient Egypt! I must say learning starts at home too!

Chin Swain, Woolmer Green,

Ah yes John of Dundee that's the way.

If all else fails and teachers cant actually inspire and teach kids lets beat the living daylights out of them until they understand the beauty of Blake and learn as they should.

whatever the case lets not have those silly women teaching, what do they know about kids - just because they teach them to speak and walk doesn't mean they can teach them arithmetic - which is probably beyond their under developed brains anyway!

we should bring back all the male teachers, perhaps dress them in somber black robes with academic caps on top with those cute little tassels. give them canes and encourage them to use them.
we could re institute conscription - at least for the thick ones or those from poor families who are feckless anyway.
perhaps we could start teaching about the empire and how so much better it was then.

after all education was so much better 40 years ago wasn't it.
no one left school then unable to read and write and do sums.

Michael C Fortune-Wood, Porthmadog,

Is this not something we have been predicting for some time now? Many people have been complaining that the pass rate for all exams has been lowered and lowered and lowered over the last 20 years. Soon students will only have to turn up to be given some form of grade !

Joan McTigue, Middlesbrough, Cleveland

the money spent on the introduction of the reading scheme known as "synthetic phonis" could be far better spent on training specialist primary teachers....most children learn to read easily whatever method is used....many teachers with thirty children in a class fail to identify particular impediments, such as glue-ear, cross-laterality, difficulties with vision, and very deprived social backgrounds....paying large sums of money to publishers and their agents will do little ot alleviate such problems

leo burton, 22220 trédarzec, france

Could it be that there is a significant number of children coming through the system with little or no English? As a primary school teacher I can assure you that this is the case. There's also a large group (about 40%) who are from severely dysfunctional families where education means nothing and whose parents think nothing of verbally abusing you in front of your class for daring to expect their little angels to do any work. School is seen as a way of getting rid of the kids so they can spend all day in the pub or lounging about (a lot of these parents don't work).

There's also the sad fact that some children are just not very bright and will NOT achieve the government targets no matter what is done. However, the government seems to see children as robots who will ALL achieve the same level at the same stage in their education which is utter nonsense. Of course they could ask teachers about what THEY think works, but that will never happen.

Angel Price-Howes, Gillingham, UK

Bring back the belt, learning by rote (which suits younger children trying to fit in) and above all get male teachers back into primary and secondary schools. I wonder what the male/female teacher ratio is in private schools compared to council run schools? Council schools in my experience are filled with whingeing female teachers constantly telling us why they can't teach boys. Bring back end of year testing and banish coursework (most of which is done by parents anyway) from counting towards a mark. Anyone could tell you that if you don't get all the information in your head at the same time for a set of exams your brain simply doesn't spot the links between subjects that make everything fall into place more easily. We must stop the feminisation of teaching before it becomes as bad as our national press which has become infected with the utter trivia of the female mind.

John, Dundee, UK