I have received the following cri de coeur from someone who was a teacher in Britain until, horribly disillusioned with the disintegration of British education and culture, he went to observe life in Ghana. Here is an extract from his message to me:

'I have been teaching in an inner-London college for 16 years and have become increasingly frustrated with the increase in administration generated by new schemes – the latest was ‘value added’ - and with the drop in standards. I was finally forced to drop much of the content of my course, as it no longer matched Edexcel’s revised programs. Students who apply for the course have been well-qualified, having more GCSE’s than ever before and with higher grades. Strangely they seem less able to cope than in previous years and don’t seem to be able to write properly! There is not time on a course, where the hours of delivery are less than those naively suggested by Edexcel, to teach the basic skills one would normally have acquired before progressing onto a level 3 course, unless you sacrifice something else. Course content and standards are therefore cut to avoid failing most of the students, which would have implications for future funding and of course, my job. My friends who work in universities are also having to lower their entry criteria and intellectual content, to compensate for the new breed of students we are sending them. In addition, I have been teaching ‘pop’ music and having to decide whether to give a pass, merit or distinction to a young man rapping about how many women he intends to impregnate was getting all too much for me! 'Before I left my college, I wrote a critique of differentiation which was to be a major focus for the upcoming inspection. In its latest reincarnation it talks about matching teaching methods with students ‘learning styles’. The methods for diagnosing these styles is, in my opinion, suspect, but they are supposed to dictate the way you teach, regardless of the demands of the subject. Interestingly, the article didn’t create much controversy amongst my colleges who said they agreed with the ideas. They, of course, will still practise differentiation and, I doubt, will not critique it openly, as their role as ‘professionals’ means they must implement the ideology of their institution. And that of course is the problem. Many of us have a growing unease that our methods, assessment procedures and philosophies are flawed, but have to suppress these feelings in order to complete the requirements of our jobs. It seems to me that these buzzwords are little more than a way to justify the increasing impossibility of teaching with the system as it stands. I believe the problems teachers face are part of a wider social problem which will not be solved in the short term and not without a drastic critique of our society. 'Observing life in Ghana, where there is still some remains of traditional society, has also forced me revise many of my former views... As an atheist, I have always rejected the ‘opium of the people’ but can now witness first-hand its function as a way of uniting a culture behind a set of shared beliefs and values... I have visited some schools here (where they still use the cane but are phasing it out to be more ‘modern’) and was surprised to see the way a huge class of pupils can sit quietly and focussed for long periods of time. This is something young people in London are unable to do. Teachers here, although very poorly paid, have as much, if not more, respect given to them as parents command. I’m sure the students are not genetically different from ours in the UK so other factors are clearly at play.'

Indeed they are. I know that this teacher's experience is mirrored by many others. Education standards in some third world countries are now higher than they are in Britain. If this country does not reverse its education decline -- and it has to start by waking up from its dream-world and acknowledging what is happening -- it will not have a future.