THINGS certainly are not what they used to be in primary schools.

Gone are the days when children chanted their tables in unison and the only administrative work the majority of teachers had to do was marking their registers.

Today's teachers complain that too much form-filling encroaches on the time they should be spnding with their pupils.

They insist they should not be made scapegoats for the failure of thousands of primary school children to meet the basic academic standards laid down by the government. They say some of the blame lies with rising class sizes and funding cuts.

We sympathise with many of those arguments. Too often we hear that class sizes have increased as school governors and head teachers struggle to balance budgets by reducing staff. A too many experienced teachers complain that administrative duties are taking them away from good, old fashioned teaching.

Education has been tampered with for far too long but the poor results have to be addressed. More changes may be called-for.

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