I don't see how you can make meaningful comparisons over time about exam results when there was year on year grade inflation driven by the need of schools to have good and improving results. The exam boards duly complied and even added new exams which were easy to pass for schools that needed them.

Daniele
last effort, u are more more difficult than i thought.
EDUCATION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY- NEITHER DOES CLASS OR PRIDE...NOR GOING TO A PRIVATE SCHOOL
There are many of your type who believe that people can't see that kids have been failed by the state system, but they can see it, and are getting peeved with you and hassan etc for pretending otherwise... What is vexing is the way the finger is pointed here and there, when we all know who is responsible... and the sickening part is that in light of the plain to see legacy, it still gets denied, the child's future potential nothing more than your political football.
And specifically to you: u clearly have something against private schools, imagining what it is they say in their class rooms about 'caning' or whatever... but u are attacking parents, and that is a pretty dumb target- seriously dumb. Where did u work again?

I think MatthewBlott generally has the right idea. It's all very well saying 'results have improved' but there is ample evidence that exams have become easier. I'm also convinced that marking, particularly in arts subjects, is more lenient than ever. What's more, there are now thousands of silly courses which are considered 'equivalent to multiple GCSEs'.

After leaving university, I worked for an NVQ college. Our courses included Child Care, Health & Social Care, Business Administration etc. We quite literally gave qualifications to an underqualified clientele, some of whom unable to actually read. Since we would not get funding for failures, there was no such thing. I saw huge amounts of data manipulation, false marking and believe it or not, tippexing out and changing incorrect answers in tests! Yet, we were still happy to give out hundreds of NVQ level 2 qualifications, which count as the equivalent of 5 A - C grade GCSEs. This was certainly common amongst similar organisations.

Ridiculous! Having said all that, it's no good just saying 'Labour failed with education'. They no doubt did a lot of damage, but, as has already been pointed out, the Tories are responsible for a lot of the horrid bureaucracy that schools face. However, the problems are far more complicated than Labour and Conservative policy. While it's true that both parties have a lot to answer for, how are governments supposed to deal with the many kids who do not want to learn... whose parents are as irresponsble and uneducated as they will turn out to be?

"educational apartheid" is the exact phrase which best describes the British education system.
"the elephant in the room" is another one which describes the one thing which prevents this system from EVER improving the chances of the least privileged kids in this society. And this is the existence of private schools. As long as the rich can send their kids to separate schools where they get educated and trained to lead the country after they have gone through their own universities,nothing will change. I just don't understand how any one can imagine the gap between rich and poor and between the social classes can ever be breached with such a system.
Labour did NOTHING to break that apartheid system. In fact they even started to privatise some of our state schools by encouraging Comprehensives to get out of Local authority control.They also encouraged commercial sponsorships of schools which was a damn disgrace.
Now the schools system is so fragmented with the public schools for the very rich, the so called "free schools" for the middle classes, the Catholic schools, the Christian evangelical schools, the Muslim schools...How on earth does Cameron expect to stick back together this "broken society" when our young are all educated in different schools with different ethos and different values, not to mention different quality.
Not surprising that social mobility is frozen in Britain.But then with a monarchy and a still very influential aristocracy and an immensely rich class of people what do you expect? The school system only reflects the society it serves. I don't believe there is real political will to change the statu quo. One thing is certain, Labour was no different.

'You trust all parents, do you? What happens when the kid has an irresponsible parent who couldn't care less about the education of her /his child? '
thank goodness for people like u who know whats best for those of us in relation to our children- especially those of us who don't live in the real world i.e. travelled, well (enough) read, taxpayer, mortgaged and interested in society.

'I was being IRONIC when I talked about "crap kids" and "caning". I was using the words that are heard in private schools when they talk about state schools kids and when they talk about discipline'
Says it all...

@ Daniele
I don't understand. The article is mehdi backslapping labour on it's education policies and the great job they did. I disagree that labour did a good job because they confused good teaching with spending money (the left always does this as it has a chip on its shoulder). I make the point that education has NOTHING to do with money, and then u talk about educational apartheid...
I don't see hyow kids in state schools are failed cos richer parents kids aren't in the classroom- Kids have been failed by meddling lefties in the last 15 years, it really is that simple. Ideological assumptions of equality that betrayed the gifted, confusion of material resource with intellectual resource, stupid amounts of paperwork that nobody took seriously whose only purpose was to 'prove' that everyone was getting brighter, the creeping advent of coursework (copying blindly) as part of the dumbing down, the terror in teaching /learning sciences, the misunderstanding of Arts, the forbidding of a teacher to show ANY LOVE whatsoever to pupils because of pathetic adult hangups etc...
These and other reasons (I have 4 friends who were teachers, an aunt who was head of maths and then head teacher, and a granny in law who were teachers ) why these kids have been failed, but I've never heard it's BECAUSE of the private system that state kids are deprived.
Then ther's talk the private schools should assist state schools in some way- Why SHOULD they? They may want to, but there is no REASON why they should. Private schools in fact should be allowed to take over stateschools and get paid for it, but privatising won't be allowed. Then, Daniele, u finish with discipline as the solution, which, erm, i began with... again, it has nothing to do with MONEY-
WAKE UP- EDUCATION HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY
CLASS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY
Please remove chip from shoulder and stand tall (and debt free)- why is the lefts solution to every problem 'we need more money?'

Mehdi Hasan, you've made some good points criticising the current economic orthodoxies and the need for a clearer alternative but this is one of those subjects where we part company.

The first point that needs making is the improvement in exam results is meaningless if the exams themselves are easier.

The wider point is that the comprehenisve system is pretty piss poor and has been failing for decades. I've just finished reading Katharine Birbalsingh's To Miss With Love and as someone who experienced a comprehensive education first hand I can tell you the stories in it are all too depressingly familiar. I would urge anyone that cares about the education of our children to read it. Education should receive adequate funding of course but that is not an end in itself. Discipline (or lack of it), attendance, expecation levels, bullying are not addressed properly. I do not advocate a return to the cane and 1950s austerity but a little bit of such things as they are experienced in private schools wouldn't be a bad thing. It's all very well giving kids things they want to read and making it easy but it does a massive disservice to them when they have to compete against their peers who have been educated at grammer or private schools.

Teachers are so dim these days, mostly because they achieved their over inflated grades through Labour's graduation for thickos, all inclusive uni system. Even doctors are finding it difficult to understand medicine as their education has been dumbed down. Combined sciences with no depth of study. Politics students, that don't even understand the British constitution. Law graduates that can't read and write. The list is endless. But nevermind, the statistics are great!!!

This post your comment section is elitist and against my human rights as it requires me to do a mathematical sum before i can post. I best let Labour know.

Awake! ?!?

You seem to be asleep.

MatthewBlott - a fine example of everyone's an expert wen it comes to education.

All I know is that I know an Ofsted inspector who reckons many schools he works with have improved hugely.

BTW: Please note the phrase 'stripping out the effects of grade inflation'.

I take it Major and Thatcher's state education policies where a success?

Major wanted a grammar school in every town.

@ Anon

Ofsted reports aren't worth the paper they're written on. I had a look at my old school Passmores Comprehensive - currently being featured on Educating Essex - and checked their results. They were pretty poor - lower than national average yet the Ofsted report said the school was outstanding. Apparently it has improved (easy to believe as it really was what you would call a sink school when I was there) but a school that can't even get half its pupils to achieve 5 A-C grades at GCSE is not "outstanding". It's disgraceful that such wording is allowed to go on its report.

Our leaders, Cameron, Cleg, Osbourne and Boris, to name a few don't make good role models. They are all educated - privately of course - and come across as shallow prats. Hardly an image that any self respecting 14 year old boy would want to aspire to. Is it any wonder boys are turned off education when the product of the country's finest education are so unheroic? By comparison the uneducated footballers, pop stars and Alan Sugars seem positively attractive.

Its a fact that approaching half of UK kids leave school without having had a proper education in basic maths and english - they are not the ones who get gcse's. Labour trying to pretend it does not happend to save face is synical, is insulting to my school friends and shows the grotesque way the party's once great values have been corrupted.

I went to a crap comprehensive implemented by self serving left wing bureacrates. I've first hand experience of the egalitarian old deal ethos of leveling down anyone who might try to get ahead -- its all about the dont haves and cant be bothereds blocking the want-to-do-wells.

Many people have a vested interest in keeping the status quo but its not good enough for my kids.

From around 2007, several of the UK's top 10 comprehensives carried out an experiment outside of the national currulim. They kept it secret from the Labour militia in central government to stop the elite interfering. They found that they could skip year 9 and it made only a tiny difference to gcse results. Hovever, kids benefited because they gained an extra year of study and could do upto 4 extra gcses. What it proved, what many already know, is the state education system is purpose built to slow the progress of the top third of kids in case they get ahead.

Parents get frustrated by it and do whatever it takes to send their kids private to escape the state. And guess what, rather than encouraging families to break the chains, Labour comes after them with avengence.

So has Labour failed at education? - yes: the old party put its own minority interests above the national interest.

A year ago The Telegraph reported Nick Clegg as saying that Britain suffers from an “Educational Apartheid” where poorer children are effectively frozen out of university places and the well-paid professional jobs that typically follow. It also offered the following information: "Some studies show British children are more likely than those in other developed countries to end up in the same socio-economic class as their parents. A London School of Economics report in 2007 concluded that the UK’s social mobility has not improved in 30 years" (see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/7952448/Nick-Clegg-challenges-m... ).

Neo-con, politically correct racist (PC racist), pro-war, pro-inequity, grossly human rights-abusing Labour has not just failed Humanity by involvement in genocidal wars ( war-related deaths total 4.6 million in Iraq 1990-2011 and 5.0 million in Afghanistan, 2001-2011:; see "Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ), it has also failed Britain through entrenched gross inequity and Educational Apartheid in particular (see "Educational Apartheid": https://sites.google.com/site/educationalapartheid/ ).

One can argue that since Labour is the traditional pro-equity reform party it makes sense for decent British voters to eschew the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)- dominated Labour Party until it firmly resolves to return to decent pro-equity values from its disgusting Blairite position of being slightly to the right of the Tories (according to John Pilger in Australia recently).

@Mr Divine
"Having taught in tough inner city Comprehensives and a Behavioural Centre in the 80s "

No way. I had a teacher sort of around then called ... Mr Divine. Think he had a gammy leg. The school was a homogenous lump of concrete pebbled dashed like an outside toilet or a borstal. Rings a bell? Or perhaps thats its just a typical utopian UK comprehensive.

I once taught ICT in a high school before getting out of the profession. Setting would be wonderful if it was properly implemented. Probably due to resource implications, sets often contain a wide variety of educational ability / attainment. In each set I taught, from top to bottom, I could divide the class into unequal thirds: a group who listened attentively and did the work, a group who needed extra support, and a group who needed you breathing down their necks to produce anything. It was a real challenge to keep the behaviour of the bottom of the class in line, provide additional 1:1 explanations for the middle bunch (who often didn't pay attention to the initial exposition / explanation) and provide extension activities to the top of the class. Then to make life really fun, there was the "Increased Flexibility Programme" - half a dozen pupils from the bottom two sets would be absent for half their lessons because they were on day release at a local college (motor vehicle maintenance / health and beauty etc.) They were supposed to catch up in their own time, but rarely did - hence I'd be teaching at least two different lessons simultaneously. To further add to the fun, being an ICT course, printing out the work wasn't an effective means of assessment, so several hours each week would be spent looking through the pupils' user areas to monitor the work they'd done; added onto which because the course involved using the full version of MS Office and Flash (products unlikely to be found on home computers), the computer rooms were opened up each lunchtime, after school and during holidays to allow pupils to work on their projects.

Add on the necessary lesson evaluations and planning, and it's not a job I'd return to in a hurry.

There is a difference between research into education and the bile spewed out by some of the writers here. Please can contributors restrain their bitterness to look at the research first? Personal experience does not constitute the experience of the generality of children's schooling. I am appalled at the unthinking response of many of the contributors here. They are muddying the waters and playing into the hands of those who want to restrict less advantaged children's chances. If you had a bad deal at school there are still opportunities for you to turn that round at Colleges and online courses. I knwo because that is what I did. So please stop complaining and try and see the picture clearly. It seems that the last Labour government did begin to change the chances of poorer children. Don't knock it but welcome and criticise those who would reverse this!

Daniele
maybe we can agree that education should be placed under a permanent coalition, it's too important to get wrong or be politicized.
Now, u wrote this;
'Could they get rid of all the crap pupils who don't want to know? '
Ok, i can feel my blood rising right now , but will keep cool. What do u mean by this?

That should have read 'things aren't black and white.' But you get the gist.

Having lived abroad in a few countries (Spain, Morocco, Malaysia) and seen the education system in these countries as well as the French system, the UK is streets ahead of all of these. My kids are currently in an American school and it is way behind what we have in the UK. Our education system is something to be proud of, as are our teachers.

@dodie02

So in a nut shell you are saying

- Shhh! dont tell anyone about the manifest failings of the UK's education system because it undermines Labour. We dont want to improve the system because that would mean first mean admitting their was a problem.

Sorry, the issue is to big and improtant for it to be suppressed any more by the Labour project. In reality, its a stong suit for Labour and being open about it would pick them up support e.g. Ed Miliband calling a truce on Labour's envy driven crusade against private schools.

Many commenters are talking about their personal experience with the system but that is no evidence at all. Of course you will have lots of personal exceptions like kids succeeding against the odds, crap private schools (I know some), brilliant comprehensive etc.. but we are talking about the most common experience that kids get in this country and you have to evaluate the system and what it means for the majority of kids, and not get bogged down with individual cases.
Unless it is a rigid apartheid system reinforced by laws (like the segregation laws in the States in the 60's)you will have exceptions to the rule.I thought that would go without saying.

Derek is right.

Also, its a synical myth that state education has improved significantly.

Nearly half of people leave state school without o level maths and english. How in any shape sense or form can that be rated as a success? The Labour spin machine briefing the media has concentrated on the small proportion of people who get good grades.

Private schools massively outperform the state both for most people and for the top third. Labours answer: shut down the private sector and level down the state.

When a Japanese school has 'attitude' problems the department brings in the top discipline teachers from other schools. They work on group activities and really tight discipline ... no inches, therefore no miles. One school was into chorus singing .. they'd be singing in class and as a school for at least an hour a day! Apparently the school was really bad (there are some) but after the regime change it was really good.