Chris woodhead (was ever a man so aptly named!) was in The Times at the weekend saying that the system in the 1950's was right. Just the top ten percent passed A level - regardless of how clever the entrants were and the quality of their answers.

So really, in the days you were talking about Teribus - education was never going to be an infallible route out of the pits. Certainly I knew some pretty clever miners who got bugger all out of their years in a sump sec. mod. it was an exclusive system.

In truth English education is still pretty much - one size fits all. A Canadian exchange teacher at our sec mod was disgusted at the way we wasted our children's talents. made no real provision for educating working class non academic kids.

I hate the way there are all these performance arts places - as though they're all going to win the X factor.