[Margaret Pilkington]

Garinda, maybe your life skills proved useful and made the Maths O level easier.
The other thing about mature learners is that THEY present themselves for education, and as such are a better bet than the kids who are at school because the law says that is where they should be.
It is far, far easier to educate someone who actually wants to learn, than it is to educate a sullen teen with a chip on their shoulder.
As for spelling......I think that damage was done when they started messing about with the different methods of teaching kids to read. I know that my daughter was learning to read using something that was called the Initial Teaching Alphabet.....I was glad when they ditched it because she had to re-learn all the proper ways to spell words. I used to sit and go through 20 spellings with her 3 nights a week.
She thought it was a pain at the time but it paid off in the end.