Erasers are an ‘instrument of the devil’ and should be banned from classrooms, an education expert has warned.

Guy Claxton, visiting professor of learning sciences at King’s College London, said rubbers wrongly encourage children to feel ashamed of their mistakes.

Youngsters need to be unafraid of making errors, to recognise and learn from them, the cognitive scientist added.

‘The eraser is an instrument of the devil because it perpetuates a culture of shame about error,’ he told the Daily Telegraph.

‘It’s a way of lying to the world, which says, “I didn’t make a mistake. I got it right first time.” That’s what happens when you can rub it out and replace it.

‘Instead, we need a culture where children are not afraid to make mistakes, they look at their mistakes and they learn from them, where they are continuously reflecting and improving on what they’ve done, not being enthralled to getting the right answer quickly and looking smart.

‘They need to be interested in the process of getting the right answer because that’s what it is like in the big wide world.’

The academic’s advice was to ‘ban the eraser, get a big road sign with an eraser and put a big, red bar across it and get kids to say you don’t scrub out your mistakes – highlight them because mistakes are your friends, they are your teachers’.

Erasing mistakes does not help children prepare for life’s realities, Professor Claxton said, adding: ‘Out in the big wide world nobody is going to be following you around, marking your work, organising your time for you. In the 21st century you are going to be the designer, the architect, the curator of your own learning.’

 ‘School should not be just a place for getting right answers to pass tests, it should be a real preparation for all kids to embark on life,’ Professor Claxton said.

‘We should narrow the gap between what learning is like in the real world and the way it is configured in school.’