We – pupils, parents, teachers, employers and politicians – all want standards to continue improving. But there are politicians' standards, and there are parents' standards.

And, as a parent, I am not obsessing about individual school performance or how my town is scoring in comparison to other towns down the road. For me, raising standards is about more than climbing up a sticky league table.

I want to know that my children are taught well, that they learn to appreciate the importance of learning, understand the practical application of what they have learnt, that they are being taught in a calm and peaceful environment and that they have been encouraged, at every turn, to explore possibilities for further study and work.

There have been three major reforms to improve GCSE exam results in England since 1997. Schools have been encouraged to compete for the most able pupils; the flip-side being that parents are meant to end up with a wider "choice" – that great New Labour buzzword – over where to send their children.

More than £1.5bn has been provided to support the establishment of "specialist" schools. And the Excellence In Cities programme, which ran from 1999 to 2006, kick-started a drive to improve the attainment of the most disadvantaged pupils in deprived urban areas.

However, Nuffield Foundation researchers found that the reforms have accounted for only one-third of the improvement in exam results. Their study suggests that easier exams, better-quality teaching, and greater effort by pupils all contributed to the rise.

So now, especially with far less money in the Government's coffers for grand ideas and fancy initiatives, I suggest that Ministers would do well to really get back to basics. Never mind redesigning the exam system and creating chaos.

At a strategic level, do everything humanly possible to encourage pupils to concentrate, and at the same time, ensure a sensible curriculum is established, maintain rigorous teaching standards, commit to efficient setting and streaming and crack down hard onbad behaviour and ill-discipline.

I am impressed that a test used to improve the concentration of athletes is being tried out in schools on Merseyside. It measures mental toughness, the ability to cope under pressure, resilience, confidence and self-control.

It sounds like an excellent way to sort out young people with miniscule attention spans, formed by constant exposure to "quick-hit" computer games and a media that glorifies immediate gratification, be it for fame, looks or money, without going to the bother of putting in any
hard work.

As I know, with my own six-year-old, boys are the worst culprits for poor concentration. It is no wonder that they are constantly beaten by girls in public examinations. Anything that encourages them to calm down and concentrate is good news.

The point is, and this is echoed by business leaders and teachers alike, GCSE results are only bits of paper at the end of the day. Employers complain that even youngsters with good passes have no idea about communication or presentation, not to mention time-keeping and polite workplace behaviour.

There is a tendency, with the trend for gathering a brace of GCSEs in a plethora of subjects, to encourage shallow learning instead of teaching pupils how to think and engage with specific nuts and bolts.

In real life, this translates into a lack of self-confidence and an inability to think on their feet; too much spoon-feeding and endless test-practising at the expense of talking and debating.

The push for quantity over quality also daunts less able pupils. They get it into their heads that they can never compare, and switch off instead of having a go.

Although there are excellent state schools in Yorkshire with pupils who regularly out-perform national averages, we have countless communities where young people are still barely literate when they leave secondary education.

In the 21st century, with all the pressure to create a modern, competitive workforce, our region cannot afford to carry these teenagers for the rest of their lives. They have to be helped to achieve, one way or another, or none of us can thrive to reach our potential economically.

I'm only a parent, and I certainly don't have a magic wand for every classroom. But, from my experience, I believe that if you can engage a child early on, and keep that child engaged, there is less chance of them losing interest in education as they grow older.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if teaching staff could be left alone to concentrate on developing and honing this approach into a fine art? Surely, the outcome would not only be happier schools, but improved GCSE results that actually represent real progress, and children who leave school better-equipped to face the adult world.