"We are very slack with our moral codes for children these days," the 64-year-old actress told the magazine. "Nowadays, children find it laughably amusing to shoplift and steal. We allow them to bunk off school and bring in sick notes." Education welfare teams might dispute this thoroughgoing analysis.
Stealing didn't happen when Lumley was at school, apparently. "There was one 'crime' during the whole time I was at school when a fountain pen went missing," she reminisced.
She'd also like to see laptops banned from schools "until you can prove you can add up on your fingers", added Lumley, who went on to bemoan a lack of respect for education in Britain.
Her solution is to get children involved in "hearty-sounding pursuits, such as getting an entire school to go and work in a farm, for a term, all together". Right, well that's next term's lesson plans and the government's new agricultural policy sorted out in one go. Fabulous.
The good news is that happy teenagers tend to grow up into happy adults. The bad news is they are more likely to get divorced.
"Those who have a happy upbringing are 60 per cent less likely to suffer mental problems and also perform better at work and socially," revealed the Daily Telegraph, reporting on a study by Cambridge University. "But they are also more likely to end up divorced."
However, it seems that may not actually be a bad thing. One possible explanation was that those with a higher level of self-esteem had a greater ability to leave an unhappy marriage, explained the paper.
So youth workers and teachers must continue to do their utmost to ensure young people have a positive experience of adolescence. If we all work hard enough we can get the divorce rate up to 50 per cent.
It's not every day that a music megastar pops into your youth club. So members of the Brunswick Club for Young People "got the thrill — and shock — of their lives" when R&B singer Usher dropped by, according to local newspaper the Fulham & Hammersmith Chronicle.
"They didn't know he was coming at all," said youth centre development worker Piers Player, who seemed just as excited as his young charges. "When he walked in they couldn't believe it - he is one of the most famous singers on the planet."
Usher - who is famous enough to get by with only one name - spent two hours talking to the young people about his charity the New Look Foundation, which runs a number of youth programmes in the US.
However, he's not the only celebrity to have visited the Brunswick club. "About 20 years ago Kevin Keegan came down," said Player. "But this was something else." Poor old Kev. We're so over him.
