DESPITE Jack Straw’s boasting of improved results in the SATS figures published for Blackburn with Darwen (along with those of Coun Thayne), a study by the campaign group ‘End Child Poverty’ shows that only 31.4 per cent of children from poor families managed five A* to C grades in their GCSEs, in Lancashire (44.1 per cent in Blackburn with Darwen).

Coun Thayne (Blackburn with Darwen education chief) believes housing and health problems mean parents do not have the time or the education to encourage their children in the home, and this in turn puts them in a particular type of poverty.

This is not the case. Parents with little or no education are perfectly able to encourage their children. Parents with little time will make time if they care.

We have a contingent of poorer families however, who have become almost entirely dependent on Labour’s benefit culture whereby benefits have become the norm and are seen as an alternative to employment.

If children are brought up in this type of environment then exam results mean very little.

Aspirations are brought down to a level where screwing the system is perceived as a viable alternative.

Morale and discipline are running at a low, while substance abuse and addiction remain high.

The prognosis is not good and so people give up. The more children a family has then the more benefits they become entitled to.

So in order to address poor education in poor families, we must first tackle this parallel culture that this Government has helped to create, not by pouring more taxpayers’ money into bureaucratic schemes but by enforcing strict guidelines upon those dependent on benefits which see them earn their monies and discourage financial rewards currently handed out every time a child is born so that the chain of events that bring about this culture is broken.

ROBIN JAMES EVANS, British National Party (address supplied).