It is more or less common knowledge amongst the British public that school standards are in free-fall. As a result of their insane fantasy to put 50% of British children through the university system this Labour government has undetaken a frenzy of educational dumbing down in order to meet that target. The failings of the system are legion - I had a bit of a rant about this here.

The level of bureaucratic control exhibited by Big Brother this government of ours has also become a matter of concern to those of us that are, well, concerned about such things. You can never get bored with criticising government interference and control freakery because there’s always something more to keep you awake.

The latest is this: the government has done away with hand-written student reports and has replaced them with a computer package. Perhaps not such a heinious crime but they have also decided what comments are available ot the teacher when making his/her assessment. So instead of reading the personally considered thoughts of the assessing teacher the parent reads the cut-and-paste remarks of a government-inspired computer package.

Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “A report should be a direct communication from teacher to parent and any weakening of that is going to spoil the effect of comments that can make pupils and parents take notice.

“This cut-and-paste idea is a very backward step. Parents and children should get the teachers to change their ways. If they use computerised phrases, it will stop them from making their typical pithy comments.”

The excuses for this kind of thing are, as usual, as ridiculous as the change itself:

Daryl King, of Simple Logic, the company behind Report Assist, said: “If you have 30 reports to do, it is hard to write original stuff if 20 of them are on the same level. We offer 12,000-plus possibilities.”

He added that Report Assist “also removes worries about spelling and grammar“.

A National Union of Teachers spokeswoman said: “Think about how many reports teachers have to write. This is about efficiency. It also helps parents who struggle with teachers’ handwriting.”

Simple Logic - how well that name mirrors its representative’s remark - miss the point; just because 20 students perform at the same standard does not mean the 20 comments will be the same. A clever student performing at average will require different comments to a student with learning difficulties who also performs at average. Each has achieved entirely differently. Only the teacher’s own thoughts can express the reality of these situations.

And as for removing ‘worries about spelling and grammar’… Well, these are teachers, aren’t they? Is it being uncharitable to expect them to know how to write in proper English?

And the NUT - another aptly named outfit - might consider that a teaching workforce freed of government shackles and ‘initiatives’ would be more than able to write their reports - as they have done for decades - and that its energies might be better focussed on getting the state out of our education.

Ah. But that requires faith in the teaching profession to be able to do a good job without government fatwas every three minutes. Only some of us have such faith…