CHILDREN as young as seven, it turns out, are being drilled by their parents for the national school tests and mums and dads are buying so many revision guides and practice papers that they are in the best-seller charts at the bookshops.
Yet some teachers are complaining that those of 11 and under are too young for this sort of swotting and that the pressure parents are putting on them to do well in tests is driving out traditional childhood pursuits - such as what, I wonder, gawping at cartoons on the telly?
They carp that children are being drilled as they were in the days of the 11-plus.
What's wrong with that?
If this is the trend, let's have more of it - as before the 11-plus was junked by the dumbing-down, prizes-for-all trendies who have made mediocrity and worse the standard in education, we weren't hearing so much about kids leaving school hardly able to read or write or do the simplest of sums.
If these tests - if not yet the restoration of the 11-plus - have alerted parents to the need to succeed, then the pressure to make the levelling teachers to enable it must at long last follow.
Carry on swotting!
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