IT’S truly alarming to hear that Blackburn College is having to spend hundreds of thousands getting teenagers through basic English and maths GCSEs.

These are youngsters who are eager to take A-levels – so they clearly want to learn – but after at least ten years of schooling they have failed to get basic skills in these two core subjects.

College principal Ian Clinton is sympathetic to headteachers because of the pressures they face.

And he is right.

They have to perform within the straitjacket of a system which demands all kinds of fancy boxes are ticked and produces league tables measuring so-called ‘performance’.

These tables in turn allow politicians to claim standards are rising.

What they don’t show is the reality of a system in which the colleges are having to teach things which should have been learned years earlier.

Not surprisingly, pupils feel let down and misled that passes in less-focused ‘exams’ don’t allow them to go for their chosen career if they haven’t got the foundations of literacy and numeracy.

It adds up to a disastrous shortfall in education.

We are grateful to the college for picking up the pieces. But it shouldn’t have to.