As easy as ABC... if A is for alcohol

THE FRIDAY THING: I AM by no means convinced there was ever a time when British school kids led the world at learning.

Certainly I was not a member of a learning group who might have led the world when it came to maths, science, chemistry and mechanics (although I did it I never understood what that was; something to do with velocity I think).

The present crop of scholars is said to be way behind the likes of Chinese children (who have 13 hours schooling a day incidentally, and I wonder what the NUT would make of that).

Children from other eastern parts outscore our offspring when it comes to reading, writing and the sciences. If there was a relegation trapdoor involved in teaching, most of our young folk and probably their teachers would be falling through it.

And if those children in schools where they actually have teachers who have been taught to teach are not exactly soaring high in the world of academia, then what chance those in the rather odd schools where the teachers have no teaching qualifications at all.

Maybe they should all be put in detention or at least given 100 lines saying: “I will be taught to teach, honest”.

The shadowy figure that is Education Secretary Michael Gove (are we sure that he really exists, I wonder) seems to have been busy behind the scenes but has not yet been able to turn round the ill-informed and poorly-taught teenagers of the UK .

Teenagers are said to be stagnating, but that may be just the smell of sweaty feet after a game of playground footy. The personal hygiene of many young boys ranks even lower than their ability at maths and science.

If our schoolchildren cast an envious eye at their shiny bright and brainy Chinese counterparts, it will probably have more to do with chicken or lamb fried rice than calculus or algebra.

But Gove, of course, does not take any personal responsibility for school failings, but instead puts the malaise down to the comprehensive education or lack of it and blames Labour in general and Tony Blair in particular for blighting the lives of thousands of young folk.

Of course our children are not hopeless at everything. More of our 15-year-old girls, for instance, get drunk than anywhere else in the developed world. I suppose it’s an achievement of sorts and the A in A-level probably stands for alcohol.