The BBC reports on the National Union of Teacher’s (NUT’s) conference in which Professor Alan Smithers claimed that schools are now ‘exam factories’. The current Labour government has had a negative effect on education, he stated, with streets less safe due to disaffected youths and headteachers baffled by having to deal with up to 58 initiatives at any given time. The following statement of his pretty much sums up my educational philosophy: “scores are not the product of education in the way that cars, barrels of oil and tins of baked beans are for their industries; schools are there to benefit the children in them.”