"Keep your hand down if there's something you want to say!"

Teachers should stop asking pupils to put their hands up to answer a question because it holds back classmates that are more timid. Instead they should pick the children they want to respond to questions so quiet pupils are tested as well as the keener ones.

The D for E said that this would help tens of thousands of 'invisible children' who fail to make enough progress at primary school. The report suggests that strategies to address this could include not putting hands up and the teacher chooses who should answer, giving 30 seconds of thinking time before being asked to answer or telling pupils to discuss questions in pairs before answering.

Apparently, a spokesman for the Education Department insisted it was not banning hands-up in class. "We would categorically never prescribe what teachers do in their own classrooms like this."

You are not kidding. We know you would never prescribe this because surely teachers know all this already!

Perhaps teachers should issue the Government with guidelines for how to avoid answering questions. Wait a minute - we know they can do this already!