With the GCSE and A-level results safely gathered in, and a good half-million or so of the nation’s 18-year-olds university-bound, Radio 4’s new series on education (continues until October) scores high on the relevance gauge. Such endeavours are apt to offer reassurance to the anxious parent concerned that his, or her, offspring should be getting a fair deal, but Sarah Montague’s sit-down with the distinguished Australian educationalist Professor John Hattie (20 August) turned out to be an absolutely pattern exercise in expectation-damping. For her guest instantly declared himself to be the twinkliest old iconoclast on the block, and what followed was not so much a case of the educational knot untied but the educational myth dispelled.It transpired that Professor Hattie