IT was Disraeli who first said: "There are lies, damned lies and statistics".

As Prime Minister, he would have known. These days, statistics must be costing taxpayers a fortune to collect, and they are printed as gospel in much of the media without us being told how they are calculated.

Take one, for example, of many - the benefit fraud figures. Their accuracy has been questioned by two Government committees, but they are still widely quoted. It does not need a lot of thought to conclude that no one can possibly know the correct amount. Your guess is as good as mine or the Government's.

Unfortunately, the disease of statisticphobia has crept into education. We now have the ridiculous, harmful league tables of school performance. Any parents who think the tables give any indication of the suitability of a school for their children are very naive. What choice of school have most parents anyway? Not everybody can have their children transported halfway across town, like you know who. Valuable education time is wasted by teachers and children in preparation for and taking tests. Parents tell us about children who have sleepless nights and worry about tests. Could this be the reason for the recent report that there are more children having nervous breakdowns than ever before? Children who do badly may give up on their education or be neglected by teachers pressurised to obtain good results.

Is this a possible cause of the increased truancy, drop-outs, and criminal behaviour in young people? If we must have statistics, let us have one on the harm done by tests.

George K Brown

Barncroft Road, Farnworth

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.