Confident in their ignorance
From Mr Tom Burkard, Secretary, The Promethean Trust Sir: Yet another complacent teacher (Let- ters, 4 September) writes to defend a school system which leaves more than a quarter of its pupils functionally illiterate after 12 years of full-time attendance. While inspecting three of East Anglia's top comprehensives for the latest Telegraph schools guide, I was escorted by dozens of the brightest and best pupils these schools had to offer. If appearances were anything to go by, they were enough to restore one's faith in state education: every one was con- fident, courteous and articulate.
Yet when I asked each of them if they could calculate 30 per cent of 150, only one seemed to understand that finding a per- centage is a multiplicative function. The rest either stood there dumbstruck, or haz- arded that 30 per cent was 'about' a third, so the answer was 'about 50'.
No doubt future pensions salesmen will have it made.
Tom Burkard Riverside Farm, Easton, Norwich
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