remember it, but dad was a dyed in the wool Labour supporter.

I had become bored with the Mirror after leaving school, toyed with the Herald and Epress but settled on The Times about 1969.
Dad never fully forgave me, but I got a full read for my money instead of quick 10mins in the toilet.

Agree, I was reading recently a teacher writing in a forum telling all how hard they have had to work, how well qualified they needed to be etc, etc and the whole post was littered with simple spelling mistakes. The kids haven't a chance nowadays if the teachers can't spell. To quote her, "it's a farse"(sic)

I had to write in to my Daughter's school about 10 yrs ago because when she moved schools she was dumped into a much lower group than her abilities should have indicated. And she started to fail even in this group because she was bored.
Something was done. A message was sent round her teachers asking for their views about whether my daughter was 'misplaced' and the English teacher (which was the class I was particularly concerned about) assumed from the message that she might be asking whether she should be put down a set because she was failing.
Her reply was that my daughter wasn't doing too well in the class. It was so littered with grammatical and spelling mistakes that I kept it.

But I knew enough about the system not to get her back up by reporting it in case my poor daughter had to stay put.

Eventually three months later however I got so frustrated with the process I threatened the Headmistress with reporting her to the local Education Authority. We came to a compromise where my daughter was put up one set. Within another 3 months she had been put up again. But by this stage she had lost a lot of ground.
Very clever kids often fail if put with bad teachers or it the wrong group. And there are far too many bad teachers with lifetime jobs because of political expediency.
I'm not having a go at teachers in general BTW I have loads of respect for the profession. But all kids are individuals and bright sparks get squashed by bad systems.

surely that is the fault of the system around in the 70's and 80's where they started to relax the rigidness we had in the 50's and 60's and let it all go with the flow ??
I remember some of my teachers (male) who were WWII vets, the senior maths teacher came in once a week in his demob suit.
Once they had retired we were left with a load of long haired liberals who wanted the kids to "think it through for themselves", it didnt matter how they got there, so long as they tried, no winners no losers etc etc.

I remember being told by a lad I met in the Royal Navy, GCSE's would be the minimum standard soon, well he had one (just one) in Art. And he was absolutely crap at his job, even failed a WRNS halfway exam when he was claiming to be "trained".

This is why so many employers have been complaining over the years that they are left to finish the education of those they expect to have some spelling, joined up writing and add a few numbers together. Which they can't.

sorry my typing skills are not perfect, i didn't proofread. but i speak English coherently

I didn't use proper punctuation in my post. I am perfectly educated in grammar, punctuations and sentence structure. So I do teach my students proper speaking and writing skills. I didn't know I was being graded writing a post on a forum. I wrote it quickly so you cannot evaluate my teaching based on a silly forum post.

oh wot a shaym - I need sevral rums to speek inglish that well, normanly its jerst abowt ledgable, or is it jerst fluidly ?

thair wos a tyme wen I cudnt spel enjinear now i r wun