IF any more evidence is required that education in Wales consists of little more than keeping a largely ineducable mass off the streets and the unemployment register, I offer the following.

Children at one of our comprehensives who find the business of learning language - including their own - rather too taxing and mathematics to be incomprehensible can take a GCSE in childcare.

An essential part of the course as deemed by the schools authorities was to issue each child with a bag of flour which they then had to pretend was a baby.

The flour was to be taken home presumably to be fed, had its nappies changed and at the end of two weeks taken back to the school to be weighed.

Any loss of weigh was interpreted as neglect.

I am not told whether the flour was white flour or whole-grain to reflect the school's multicultural credentials of which it is so proud.