40% of children can't do basics

Four out of 10 children left primary school this summer without mastering the basics of reading, writing and maths, figures showed today.

Ministers hailed the latest national curriculum test results as the "best ever", after a one percentage point rise across English, maths and science.

But results in reading were no better than two years ago, while the proportion of children making the grade in writing showed no improvement since last year.

This is disgraceful especially when schools are cancelling subjects like PE, art, history and geography to concentrate on getting their pupils to pass. If they can’t get them to pass we should stop employing people as teachers who barely passed their own exams and stop giving teachers so much red tape.