Sounds to me that my home country is going down the same road as here in the United States . . . pouring more and more taxpayer monies into providing modern conveniences for students that do nothing to help them use the brains God gave them. Then they try and claim they need to have smaller classes to give that "individual attention". There was an average of 40-45 students in a class when I attended school and none of us entered the workforce illiterate. Perhaps they should throw out all those computers and calculators and get back to basics . . . or are present day educators unable to deal with such a scenario?

Lynda Harrison, Sacramento, California, U.S.A.

Surely it would be better for the government to use the money for the 17-19 year olds for the priamary school children. The classes would be smaller and more time spent concentrating on the 3 R's giving them all a good grounding before going onto more and more subjects that they cannot cope with their lack of a good grounding.

ann, Houston, texas

Education,education,education? No,squander,squander,squander! This is,and has been Labour's stock answer to all problems. It did not solve problems in the past and it does not solve problems now. The government should stop interfering in education and the NHS,leave it to professionals and remove divisive,dogmatic politics from these failing public sectors which have had billions of pounds invested in them with little or no improvement.

Rod Ballard, Leicester,

I have been a teacher for nearly four decades. When I began, teachers acted in local parentis, with the class a rather strict family, exercising the right of reasonable chastisement. We did our best to help children develop in all areas, not only academically. In the past decade we have become akin to civil servants 'delivering a curriculum' for constant assessment and league tabling. With more children lacking the strict traditional family home, more is required from teachers, who in turn have less and less power and risk legal action if they want to maintain discipline. There is today more drugs and promiscuity and bullying than forty, thirty or twenty years ago. We need to carefully rethink the role of schools and teachers.

Joe Feld, London,

I really can't say it better than Bryan in Totland Bay.

"...10 years of Marxist meddling... PC do-gooders ripping education apart... attempting to prove their left wing ideology and failing even by their own subjective standards."

All I would add is that it has been going on for a lot longer than 10 years. The "constructivist" approach to education that has been in vogue since the sixties makes it impossible to define what children should learn (the dears have to construct their own knowledge, because who is the teacher to say what is true anyway?) This slack-jawed relativism is at the heart of what's wrong in schools. Next you'll hear from the National Union of Teachers: "who are we to impose our western racist standards on children by expecting them to read or add up?"

Some people are so open-minded their brains fall out.

Ben, Hitchin, Herts

Try creating an environment where parents can spend time with their children helping them read and write instead of keeping them so busy with work so they can pay bills to afford grossly inflated house prices resulting in a generation of illiterates. The real crime of unchecked capitalism.

Farrukh, Woking, UK

How come the GCSE and A level results are so stunningly good then? When I took A levels it was not possible to do more than 4 and the pass rate was no where near 96%. and yet apparently 2/3 of 11 year olds can't pass key stage 2.
there is something wrong in the assessment here.

CA, Manchester, UK

If I was a teacher, I would be completely demoralised. No effective discipline allowed, curriculums regularly turned upside down by the government, who obviously have no idea what they're doing and, like the staff in hospitals, they constantly have to strive to make the government look good, by addressing their meaningless targets.

If I was a teacher, I would join with all the others and BLOODY WELL GO ON STRIKE until the educators got control of the whole mess.

Shirley Bowen, Blackpool, UK

And so the nosnsense goes on: "learning times tables by eight" says Lord Adonis - that is one third, i.e. 33.333%, <see, I can do fractions and percentages - "percentages, what are they???">, less than I learnt them 50 years ago my 12 times tables in primary school in Dover. Why not really have a good look at the way kids were ACTUALLY TAUGHT several decades ago, instead of the hi-tech, consultant-argued rubbish that is imposed on them these days. Has the country noticed that it is falling behind other countries? Does it care? Is it too late? WAKE UP!

Gerry Watts, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

It's really quite sickening to hear phrases like "world class education system" while in fact there is a prevalent anti-education culture and Britain is bottom of the OECD league tables for maths and science. So many other countries are civilised and successful while this country is best at producing louts.

MikeMSN, Midsomer Norton, UK

This is an absolute scandal - we have had 10 years of Marxist meddling, liberal PC do-gooders ripping education apart and spending billions in the process to try and 'prove' their left wing ideology can transform schooling and now even by their own heavily subjective, doctored and fudged testing procedures they are failing miserably. The money wasted is bad enough and every Labour minister and public servant involved in this should not just be ashamed, but should be forced to pay for their stupidity - however the biggest failure of all is the proper education they have denied so many in their zealous quest to rid us of what worked and introduce a doctrine that simply doesn't

Bryan, Totland Bay, UK

Does anyone know how many reviews this government has ordered in, say, the past 12 months? Clearly what is needed is more ASBOs and spot fines for those children who don't meet the standards du jour.

David Masu, Zürich,