The United Kingdom government seems to make policy announcements on the hoof without thinking them through. Recently there was an announcement that all primary school children are to have five hours of cultural activity per week. This is all very well and good and cultural activities are very good for children but how are poor hard-pressed teachers to fit this into an over-burdened timetable already beset by government interference.

Primary school pupils by government decree must have five hours of literacy per week, five hours of numeracy and five hours of sport along with the new prescription for five hours of cultural activities that totals twenty hours. The primary school day is generally from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon, six hours in total, primary schools generally have an hour and a half's break at lunchtime and two twenty minute breaks one in the morning and one in the afternoon, a total of two hours and ten minutes, that leaves actual teaching time per day of three hours and fifty minutes. School is open from Monday to Friday in the United Kingdom, five times three hours and fifty minutes is nineteen hours and ten minutes insufficient to fit in all that the government prescrbes let alone to allow for all the other invaluable things that primary teachers used to teach or the kind of exploratory learning that engages youngsters into a love for learning that is lifelong. No time for the inspired and creative teaching that brilliant primary teachers do so well.

I remember a primary school teacher who realised that the boys in her class were not working as well as they ought and realised that the way to reach them was through football. So for the rest of the term all the boys' lessons were about football, for example; maths was goal averages and the like, they learnt the geography through discovering where the grounds were that the different teams played. English was reading about footbal and writing match commentaries or a report on a match and so on. The boys in her class were engage in earning and were soon back on track and doing well in their lessons and most of all enjoying them and working hard.

This inspired piece of teaching could probably not happen today because government meddling now prescribes what teachers must teach and how. SATS tests and inspections mean that children are taught, as in Victorian times, to pass tests not how to learn and to love learning for its own sake. This narrow teaching will not create the innovators and entrepreneurs that the U.K will need in this increasingly global market, what it will create are young people with narrow viewpoints and narrow minds.