The OECD released a report this week on education standards. It makes for grim reading: we’re bottom of the class. Those aged 16-24 in England came 22nd of 24 for literacy, and 21st for numeracy. We’re behind almost every other advanced nation in the world.
What’s gone wrong? There’s a clue in the different scores by age. Young people who had pretty much their entire education under the last Labour government do worse than most older generations.
The clear problem – is a decade of dumbing down led by Labour and supported wholeheartedly by the teaching unions. They made qualifications in cake decorating ‘equivalent’ to physics GCSE. They allowed calculators in primary maths tests. They broke up GCSEs into bite sized modules ensuring a constant treadmill of exams. They allowed our exams to get easier and easier. They even tried to abolish proper subjects and replace them with ‘learning themes’.
We’re taking action to clear up this mess. One
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