London, August 21 :

Workers in Britain have such poor mastery over the three ‘Rs’ — a widely used abbreviation for reading, writing and arithmetic — that an average of one in three bo-sses is forced to send its staff for remedial training. In a recent report, the most powerful business lobby, the Confederation of British Industry has claimed that failures in the UK school sy-stem have left a

generation without the basic skills they need to do their jobs.

Poor knowledge of basic English and Mathematics is said to be cos-ting the British economy 10 billion pounds a year and putting Britain at a risk of losing jobs to countries like India and China.

One in five employers said they ‘frequ-ently’ encountered literacy and numeracy pro-blems among recruits and nearly half believed school-leavers nowadays were worse at English than five years ago.