THE National Curriculum, GCSEs, A-levels. Geography, history, English, maths. What a waste of time.

The many subjects that generations of children are familiar with are all well and good if you fancy a spot on University Challenge. But are any of them really useful in real life? The answer is, no.

What youngsters really should be getting to grips with are the things that are going to cost them dearly in years to come. Plumbing, joinery, sewing (not just the 'button-on' lessons that many turn out to be), decorating. A GCSE or two in wallpapering would not go amiss in most households, along with A-level drain-clearing or Laminate-laying.

This would set them up in life and give them skills that most people, to their cost, are sorely lacking.

The under-30s have been revealed as a 'flat-pack' generation, without the skills to carry out the simplest household tasks. Nearly half are unable to tackle DIY jobs such as wallpapering, while one in four struggles to sew a hem or wire a plug.

This results in their spending thousands of pounds on tradesmen or turning to their parents for help.

I hope my children don't turn to me. I haven't got a clue how to put up wallpaper. Just watching people laying it out on pasting tables, cutting, dangling plumb lines and slapping it on the wall in straight strips leaves me wide-eyed with fascination.

The one time I had a go, I ended up throwing away half the roll. Thankfully, it was lining paper, not some fancy floral stuff from Laura Ashley at £40 a shot.

Even sewing a hem stumps me. I got away with it recently when my youngest daughter was one of a number of pupils chosen to dress as a 'poor person in Tudor times' for a school trip. The undulating hem of her home-made skirt, with its cack-handed, ultra-visible blanket stitch was perfect. I was just glad she wasn't in the 'rich person' camp, with embroidered bodices and lacy ruffs.

More than a decade over 30, and I'm as useless at DIY as the next person. So are most people I know. We panic if a tap drips or a bulb blows. We squeal if the toilet blocks or the iron starts to smell and we go completely to pieces if the washing machine packs up.

And this is despite the number of DIY programmes on TV. It is obvious that we don't watch to learn. We simply want to see other people making as much of a botch-up as we would in similar circumstances.

I have to admit, my husband does have DIY nous, effortlessly building bookshelves, plumbing in a sink and tiling the shower. He baulks at the idea of paying for people to carry out work and is keen to get started on our leaky guttering this summer. But he appears the exception to the rule.

My dad's generation aren't much better. My parents seem to 'get a man in' for everything from installing a bathroom (understandable) to hammering in a nail (not). Almost every time I go home, there's a stranger in overalls kneeling in a corner next to a toolbox.

Schools are planning to introduce lessons on how to manage money, but teaching these much-called-upon manual skills would not only be useful but would save thousands over a lifetime. Key Stage 1 plumbing. Key Stage 2 carpentry. Sounds a lot more fun than maths and English too.

Updated: 11:33 Tuesday, April 18, 2006