JAM tomorrow, pie in the sky, loadsamoney, maybe even hokey-pokey-penny-a-lump - as the summer term drew to a close, every day seemed to bring new ideas on the future path of education from anyone with a hatful of theories to throw into the ring.

There will probably be a few more along during the holidays. Who'd be a teacher?

I never wanted to be a teacher. I know my limitations and the skill, never mind the saintly patience, needed to impart knowledge to 30 or so of other people's children 40 weeks of the year is so far beyond them as to be over the horizon.

And that was in those far-off days when I could reasonably have relied on children sitting fairly still and listening.

I'd have written, at most, a termly report on each of them; had to deal with exams or tests a couple of times a year and seen inspectors for odd days at random intervals. "League tables" would have meant how well the school was doing locally at football or netball.

Six weeks' summer holiday seems little enough time for today's paperwork-beset, Ofsted inspected, test-ridden teachers to catch their breath and then take a deep one before plunging into the autumn term.

Spare an extra-kind thought for the teachers, generally women with homes and families to run in their spare time, who have spent their year with the lot known as "reception".

They will have to start again in September with a new group of not much more than toddlers, total novices in the world that is "proper school".

I've always thought it must be rather like animal training but I didn't realise how much until a recently-retired deputy head, who specialised in that area said of one small boy: "I was determined that, before he left my class, he'd have joined the human race."

This poor little tot had arrived in "reception" with absolutely no life skills and it was uphill all the way simply teaching him the basics of existence and of understanding simple language. He hadn't started out less able than the others but, in those pre-school years when the brain is like a sponge, his had had nothing to soak up and so had apparently never acquired the knack.

His deputy head's ultimate target was that, before he went up into juniors, he would be able to recognise and write his own name "then at least, if he learns nothing else by 16, he can sign for his benefits". He moved up to the juniors doing rather better than that, fortunately and thanks to a dedicated teacher who'd taken a career decision to remain "deputy" so she could stay in the classroom.

He was the extreme case but, she said, many more arrived with her with no idea of spoken communication or of understanding an instruction.

I'd always thought that preparing a child for school, after playgroups or nursery where we hoped they'd learned to relate to, and share with, other children, consisted mainly in finding shoes they could fasten themselves and teaching them to use a knife and fork and recognise their first name beside a cloakroom peg.

Would it now be the best idea, I said to a random group as we made our way through a rain-sodden folk festival last weekend, to make sure they simply understood what "no" meant.

Do I need to tell you where the utterer of the heartfelt: "Yes, please!" is employed? Of course not.

What it all boils down to is one of my favourite hobby horses - talking to small children. From birth. About anything and everything. No one learns the meaning of words in general otherwise, let alone that "no" really does mean "no"