Article by Matt Grist from Demos in today's Mirror

I don't usually bother with the Daily Mirror.  Usually it's made up of celebrity "gossip" (code for made-up lies) or opinions that are so exaggerated and hectoring they cannot be taken seriously.  However I thought I would read it each day during the conference season, and this article by Matt Grist from Demos in today's Mirror caught my eye.

He is right about everything. 

But I do not understand what he means by more investment to ensure that children do not leave primary schools unable to read and write.  What sort of additional investment is required?  The primary schools are already staffed by qualified teachers.  Does he mean  we need to replace these with different teachers?  Does he mean the existing teachers need some kind of monetary incentive before they will do the job they are already paid to do?  What are the EXACT reasons that make the state schools in the United Kingdom so bad? (I genuinely want to know this, and I don't buy the idea that the state schools are so bad because the public schools are so good).

Also he overlooks the fact that few employers are going to bother training young people when they can get an endless supply of near-slave workers from eastern Europe - uninterested in workers' rights, willing to work for the minimum wage (and usually well below the minimum wage), able to be dispensed with on a whim.