NUMBER one son is now at secondary school. I had this inward grin in the days before he started, thinking "now you're going to find out what real learning really is..." But less than a month into this brave new world, who's the one feeling insecure? Yup, Dad!

It's the homework you see. We made a rule with the boy on day one - now he would be getting proper homework, and he would do it as soon as he got it - none of this waiting around and rushing to finish it on the night before it's due back.

What I hadn't bargained for, however was the type of homework he'd be bringing home - coz it's real homework isn't it - secondary school homework, the kind I did, and now can't remember at all...

For example there was his history, and of course I'd already told son that I got an A at O-level. His reply? "What's an O-level?"

Anyway we're in 1066, easy stuff, the Battle of Hastings, Harold gets an arrow in the eye and all that. So I'm a little nonplussed when said son asks me which I thought deserved to be king of England, "William, Harold Hardrada or Harold Goodwenson?" Eh? Two Harolds? Which one's which? Son stares at me awaiting the demonstration of my historical prowess, and all that comes into my head is that irritating funny accent from Big Brother; "10.22am, who gets to be King, Harold, Harold or William? You decide..."

It takes frantic searching of our big family history book to reveal what every teenager reading this already knows, that one Harold is actually Harald, King of Norway, and it's the other one that got it in the eye at Hastings - of course, I remember it all now... Yeah right.

Right, so having got an E in the history test without even needing the exam board to purposely mark me down, we move onto maths. Now when we had our school induction evening some weeks ago (yes, we parents got one as well as our offspring) we were told the children would need calculators for maths, and of course the school just happened to have suitable examples available for sale. Having paid my tenner I looked at said device, and it had seemed to have more buttons on it than the control panel for the Space Shuttle. And they all had funny squiggly symbols on them - ones I'm sure I knew the meaning of when I was at school.

Well yesterday, I got the dreaded call - "Dad, can you help me with this maths?" After 10 minutes consideration of the problem concerned my answer was "no not really..." And all that was being attempted here was something called number sequences from formulas. Son hasn't yet discovered the fun and games that are logarithms, algebra, sines and cosines and all that.

Now I passed my maths O-level, which by implication means I mastered all those funny formulas and the like. And the moment I left school I forgot them, probably because in my working life I never found a situation where I needed to use them. The only time I ever come across them is when watching University Challenge on the box, and nowadays they might as well be Greek to me - I can't read that either...

And the most worrying thing about trying to cope with son's homework? This is year seven, the first of his secondary school career. It can only get worse....