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New Labour's promise of "education, education, education" should, according to a devastating report by Ofsted's Chief Inspector Christine Gilbert, be rewritten to read "education, acceptable education, mediocrity".
A third of Britain's state schools offer learning that is no more than mediocre, she concludes.
And their verdict coincides with criticisms from the outgoing chairman of Marks and Spencer, Sir Stuart Rose, who finds many would-be employees can barely read, write or add up.
Sir Terry Leahy, chief executive of Tesco, was even harsher in his condemnation of the failings of 11 years of compulsory schooling.
As for school leavers going on to higher education, universities find themselves needing to lay on remedial classes in many subjects, while being told to accept low-income children with poor grades in order to compensate for the failings of their schools.
Around half of all 16-year-olds still fail to achieve five good GCSEs including English and Maths.
Employers cope somehow: we revealed yesterday that at the Ocado warehouse, among the most sophisticated in the world, 60 per cent of staff are Polish.
But the poor performance of the education system, besides short-changing a generation of young people who deserve better, will have a devastating effect on Britain's competitiveness if it is not addressed.
Chinese and Indian universities are turning out well-educated graduates in their millions, while youth unemployment here is rising fast.
It is no good pretending, as the Schools minister Iain Wright has done, that things can only get better.
The Teach First programme was a successful innovation but touches only a few; meanwhile many of the vastly expensive new academies are struggling to show better results than the schools they replaced.
Heads need more power to sidestep the union stranglehold over teachers' pay and terms. Setting up schools should be easier.
For those who voted Labour in 1997, particularly in London, failure in education has been the biggest betrayal.
Iraq inquiry Mk Three
The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war opens today - but the Prime Minister is not expected to give evidence to it before the general election.
We learn now that the inquiry will not blame individuals.
Meanwhile, according to a recent Cabinet Office document, few of the recommendations of the previous Butler inquiry into Iraq intelligence failures have been implemented.
Gordon Brown accepted the internal intelligence review that followed Butler, but few of Butler's recommendations have been put in place.
The Defence Intelligence Staff, which sounded alarm bells over the Iraq war case, has had its budget cut and been exiled from Whitehall.
None of this augurs well for the Chilcot inquiry. The Iraq war left hundreds of British servicemen dead and created an insurgency that has only just begun to come under control.
This expensive new inquiry has little chance of finding answers to what went wrong where the previous two failed.
Find us a boffin, Boris
This newspaper has always supported plans for a London version of the Paris Vélib scheme, which provides easy-to-hire bicycles to help cut congestion and emissions.
However, replacing the many stolen or damaged machines is costly.
Now, surely, is the moment for British engineering wizardry to come up with better anti-theft measures, perhaps making use of the extensive central London CCTV network. Boris, find us a boffin.
Reader views (2)
See now, there we go! A perfect example of the moanings of "those at the top". You've got to ask yourself just how much we value our native workforce. I mean, the sudden discovery (only yesterday) that Ocado employs a 60% Polish workforce should come as no surprise at all. They have traded now for 8 years (without profit) and use the excuse of a poor native workforce to justify employing over qualified, desperate to earn anything, Eastern Europeans. Not only has Ocado shown its greed at cutting costs no matter what but they have undervalued the rewards of a decent days work. Now surely you're not going to tell me it takes a Phd qualified individual to stand at an automated picking station for 8 hours being nothing more than a connected element of the machine? Nah... More likely the "dumb" natives have seen the rewards, done the math and realised they can't bring up a family on them kind of wages... Now, there is a little know cheaper workforce that has worked for over a pound an hour less in the North... "Because it costs more to get the trailers up there".Furthermore, consider this... The average age of Ocado's workforce is 27! Now then, who's education watch would they have fallen into? I suggest we stop beating up our own education system and start looking at how the wealth is shared.
- Bowks, manchester, 25/11/2009 07:09
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Labour have failed completely in all areas.
If you haven't noticed they have bankrupted our society morally and financially. In their last desperate hours you have the likes of Harman with her 'slash and burn' Equalities Bill.
Nothing like going down in a fiery ball of cynicism.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 24/11/2009 10:21
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