Billions spent on education, but British schools slump in the world league

The findings are the third in a week to highlight falling education standards in a country with a schools budget that has risen to more than £50billion a year.

Our schools now stand at 24th in a table of teenagers' achievement in maths, level with Poland and down from eighth in six years.

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Rankings in literacy have fallen from seventh to 17th as schools fail to keep pace with places such as Estonia, Liechtenstein and Hong Kong.

In addition, one in five 15-year-olds in the UK tested in maths and literacy by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development failed to reach basic standards.

In the best-performing nations, the figure was one in 20.

Standards among the brightest pupils have also slumped, amid evidence that schools are hampered by shortages of qualified teachers.

It means the UK has slipped out of the top ten in maths, reading and science and is the only high-achieving nation from 2000 to be ranked among average performers in the follow-up 2006 table.

Results in the report for 15-yearolds in science - leaked last week - saw Britain slide from fourth to 14th place.

And in a separate study of ten-year-olds' reading skills, England fell from third place in 2001 to 19th.

A report on the latest rankings said the UK should have done better in relation to other English-speaking countries with similar education systems.

Experts said the OECD study - covering 57 nations compared to 27 in 2000 - provided independent evidence of falling standards, exposing as a "charade" Government claims of continually-rising performance.

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Ministers have hailed "best ever" results in GCSEs and A-levels as proof that flagship education initiatives are effective and that big increases in the schools budget are justified.

But our slide down the international rankings prompted warnings that too much extra funding has been swallowed up in red tape.

Critics also said it shows that improvements in exam results have been achieved by training pupils to pass exams and lowering exam standards.

Opposition politicians demanded a full-scale review of education policies.

Ministers claimed comparisons between the 2000 and 2006 OECD reports are invalid since the UK sample size in 2000 "did not meet response rate standards".

However, following the 2000 results Tony Blair said the country should be "very proud", while then Education Secretary Estelle Morris hailed them as a "vindication" of Labour's education reforms.

According to the latest OECD study, strong performance in the tables was linked with firm discipline in schools, setting by ability in some subjects and plenty of choice for parents over where their children are educated.

The publication of results for parents in the form of exam league tables was also correlated with strong performance, contradicting many in the education establishment who claim they are damaging.

Many of the highest-achieving nations, including South Korea and Hong Kong, were also more likely to operate selective admissions policies.

For the study, more than 400,000 pupils across participating countries - more than 13,000 of them in the UK - were tested in reading, maths and science and given questionnaires.

The project attempted to gauge how well pupils were able to apply their knowledge in real life, rather than simply regurgitate facts and figures.

Anastasia de Waal, head of education at the think-tank Civitas, said: "These devastating results provide a much-needed and much-anticipated expose of the Government's standards charade.

"That standards have actually declined among UK pupils is unsurprising when we consider that much ostensible improvement has been achieved through harmful shortcuts.'

Schools Minister Jim Knight said the Government had commissioned a review of international studies amid "confusion" between reports.

"We can still be confident that our tests are an accurate measure of standards and show a steady improvement," he added.