There are often times when heads are shaken at the standard of learning in schools today. Recently, however, numbers of children arriving at school exhausted, poorly dressed and too stressed to study have risen in correlation with rising poverty levels.


Sometimes they haven’t eaten for days and one child had infected toes as a result of forcing his feet into shoes that were far too small for him. Students even go so far as to miss classes because they cannot afford to pay for the transport they need to get to them.
At the same time comes the news that a large percentage of children have no idea where the fruit and vegetables that they eat come from. Although probably much more streetwise than the elder generations, when it comes to the food they eat they simply haven’t got a clue. Reminiscent of the evacuees’ rumoured fear of cows when they were moved to the countryside during World War Two, 58% of children thought that a pumpkin grew in the ground and only 23% would be able to identify a foxglove correctly if shown one. In a result that is both comical and shocking, 6% of children thought that broccoli grew on trees. This indeed is a sad indictment of the times.

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