THEY’RE supposed to be the happiest days of your life – school days, that is.

My son (busy preparing for exams at the moment) looked incredulous when someone said that to him recently. That I had just replaced an hour of computer gaming with an hour of history revision about King John, the Barons, Magna Carta and deciding whether the instigators of the gunpowder plot were framed, didn’t really help the cause. The torture meted out to the gunpowder plotters was nothing compared with the modern day torture inflicted on his young mind having to remember its details. I’m with Just William on this one; he reckoned that Guy Fawkes got bored waiting for Christmas and since November was looking decidedly dull, instigated fireworks and bonfire night to brighten things up a bit. I fought the temptation to say to my son; ‘You think it’s stressful now? Wait until you’re grown up!’ As Paul Merton put it, “My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I’ve endured over the past twenty-five years.”

As governor of a school praised by inspectors as one at which children were notably happy, I greeted with some relief the news that, after complaints about the burden of stress put on children and their teachers, SATS tests of Maths and English for seven-year-olds would be phased out. It is somewhat disappointing (though sadly, of no surprise) to learn that they are to be replaced with ‘tables testing’.

There is academic debate about whether the rote learning of times tables actually helps children’s understanding of mathematical concepts; Pavlov taught dogs to salivate to order but it didn’t contribute to their digestive health. On the one hand, charities, celebrities, royal personages and the medical profession are all working hard to raise public awareness of mental health issues – particularly among children and young people, saying that 10 per cent of children have a diagnosable mental health problem; 20 per cent of adolescents experience a mental health problem in any given year and half of all mental health problems are established by aged 14.

On the other, Nick Gibb, the school standards minister, seems determined to raise its incidence, claiming that the tests will somehow alert teachers to those pupils who ‘require extra support.’ But parents and teachers know full well which children are struggling with maths and which ones are storming ahead. The problem in my school is not identifying the children who need extra help - but finding the resources to give it to them.

Times table testing for seven-year-olds might make good on a manifesto commitment that appeals to a conservative political base, but a growing minority of children will learn, not their tables, but patterns of stress and anxiety and mental ill health that will follow them throughout their adult lives.