I enjoyed these two letters this morning….

SIR – Ten years ago I became a teacher of business studies and economics at a state school in Oxford. I was shocked by the poor level of literacy and numeracy that I came across, including that among sixth-form students.
Over those 10 years, I discovered the huge effort the school put into these disciplines, through book clubs for literacy, for example, and a cross-curricular focus on both. But the problem was that young people do not practice either discipline in their day-to-day lives. I encountered sixth-formers who had not read a book since they were 12, other than at school, and others who firmly believed they did not need numeracy skills as “that is what calculators are for”. Any judgment on our education system should therefore be tempered by these realities of modern young lives.
Chris Whymark
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

SIR – We have created a society in which being fat, lazy, selfish or ignorant, in any combination, is acceptable if not downright admirable, or at the very least somebody else’s fault. Benefits are a right; knowledge is suspect; fame is better than graft; money is art; art is money; and getting drunk is high culture.
I’d say that our education system is entirely fit for purpose.
Victor Launert
Matlock Bath, Derbyshire