Janet Street-Porter: Balls is fiddling while education goes up in smoke

I paid a visit to my old school last week, and the minute the bell sounded for lessons memories came flooding back. The dining room had that cabbage smell I remembered so well. Lady Margaret in west London is now a highly regarded comprehensive – it was a grammar school in my day – but some things haven't changed. It's still a single-sex girls' school; there are strict rules about discipline, and girls still have to wear the same distinctive black and red striped blazer that I did. Lady Margaret is successful because it's housed in Georgian buildings which are listed, so it has had to remain relatively small (just three classes in each year).

You have to be in the school only five minutes to see that this is somewhere pupils respect – the walls are covered with paintings and drawings. You can hear the musical instruments being practised, and there was singing and a netball match after school ended. I had a love-hate relationship with the place – I railed against the rules, hated the way we were groomed to be "young ladies" and was heartily sick of hearing the school motto ("I have a goodly heritage", whatever that means) by the time I left – with 10 O-levels and three A-levels, the first girl ever to study architecture at a top college. My teachers had supported and encouraged me every inch of the way.

Lady Margaret continues to thrive, in spite of the best efforts of people such as Ed Balls to mess up what works well. Has there ever been a more useless chap in charge of education? He went to posh schools with impressive academic credentials, and yet he seems to want to impose a depressingly low set of standards on the state sector, all in the name of political correctness. I have no time for fee-paying schools, and nearly came to blows with a friend over my beliefs the other night. I'm proof that the state system not only works, but can also take a stroppy teenager and turn her into a highly motivated achiever. That's what Lady Margaret's still does as a comprehensive today.

I did not bother to ask the headmistress what she thought of Mr Balls's latest big idea – that Twitter should be taught at primary schools, along with how to write blogs and make podcasts. He wants pupils to communicate online and develop keyboard skills. It's all a bit like learning to drive without actually owning a car – currently 40 per cent of kids leave primary school unable to read or do basic arithmetic. Now they'll just be able to tap out drivel on laptops and mobiles. Hoorah!

Primary schoolteachers are threatening to boycott the useless Sats tests for 11-year-olds – after Balls was forced to drop them for 14-year-olds. Every week there's another marking fiasco and furious debate about whether exams are too easy (science being the latest subject to be "re-evaluated") or if they should be redesigned for the umpteenth time. All I know is that education in 2009, as it was for me back in the 1960s, has to do just one job, and that is to give kids life skills and the knowledge they need to be able to hold down a job.

The number of Neets (not in training, employment or education) aged 18 to 24 has almost doubled since 2003. Another survey reckons as many as one in six 16- and 17-year-olds fall into this category, so the Government seems to have failed at education big time. No amount of Twittering or keyboard skills will help youths who can't read, write, talk in sentences or articulate a reasoned argument to join the world of work. Half our 19-year-olds don't manage two A-levels, the basic standard required by many employers and universities.

Another Balls big idea is to get teenagers aged 16 and 17, with only three C-grade GCSEs, to work as apprentices helping pupils in the classroom. There are plans to recruit as many as 18,000 to work in primary schools. The notion that under-qualified kids can impose structure and discipline on their peers beggars belief. It's just trendy toss – education on the cheap. Having made a television series where I taught the National Curriculum to nine-year-olds, I can vouch that classroom assistants perform a valuable role – but they need to be adults with the ability to enforce discipline and help kids to learn in a positive way, not using skills they might have gleaned from watching The X Factor.

Finally, Balls plans to create new league tables, ranking schools by discipline and the number of pupils eating lunches and playing sport – based on a system he observed on a trip to the US. All this is just fiddling while Rome burns. Back at Lady Margaret they know there's only one way to get results – good teachers who enthuse their pupils and who help them to raise their game. Twittering isn't on the timetable.

Have Mercy Madonna picks another child to drag around

Madonna is in Malawi this weekend starting the adoption process to add to her pick'n'mix brood. Little Mercy James has been whisked from an orphanage to a luxury lodge to meet her potential new mum. There will be a court hearing later this week, and, barring being ruled unsuitable because of her 22-year-old toy boy and a recent divorce, Madonna should be able to leave the country within days with Mercy in tow.

I applaud Madonna for putting her money where her mouth is and spending a large sum setting up a charity to educate orphans and homeless children in Malawi, but is removing kids from their blood relatives and their traditions, to a pampered life on the other side of the world is really their best option? Save the Children does not think so, and has appealed to celebrities like Madonna to help children stay in their own communities.

Like Angelina Jolie, Madonna seems determined to expand her family in what is ultimately a pretty self-centred way, dragging them around the world while she continues to carry out a punishing work schedule, and insisting that they be indoctrinated in Kabbalah, with all its rules and regulations. These children seem a replacement for a rewarding adult relationship – she's in charge and they toe the line – something her former husband just couldn't put up with any longer.

The caviar of spuds with a price to match

Michelle Obama has begun to turn part of the White House Lawn into a vegetable patch to feed the family and to serve at official functions. I wonder if she'll bother to grow potatoes, which take up so much space and then make you weep when you dig up a perfectly healthy looking plant to find a couple of shrivelled tubers underneath. I'm taking no chances this year, planting my spuds in hessian pots in which they'll be cosseted and watered to produce maximum results with zero chance of infection. They'll never rival the gorgeous taste of Jersey royals, though, truly the caviar of spuds. The early ones (grown under glass) went on sale last week – you can send off for them by post from a local grower. Sadly, at £13.49 a kilo including postage, they cost about as much as top-quality beef.

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