Paul Box/ Don't let him down

EVER since the cap on the number of children who could be awarded top grades in their GCSE exams was abolished in 1988, the proportion of pupils attaining these heights has relentlessly increased. This week that inexorable progress was revealed to be illusory. Three separate studies showed how Britain is failing its schoolchildren—and shortchanging the country in the process.

All rich countries rightly expect their young people to be literate and numerate by the time they leave school. Some aspire to loftier goals such as scientific prowess, fluency in a foreign language and a rough grasp of history. In a report released on December 1st, Reform, a think-tank, pointed out the poverty of Britain's ambitions for its children.

Students at 16 are required to take just three academic subjects—English, maths and science—and many study no others. Even if they leave school with vocational qualifications too, they are ill placed to better themselves. Employers consistently value the ability to think above skills that can be learned on the job, and universities that accept students with vocational qualifications do so only after admissions tutors have reassured themselves that the young person in front of them is no dullard. Allowing pupils to choose vocational courses over academic ones—indeed, encouraging it, as vocational qualifications are treated in published school-league tables as if they were worth twice as much as academic ones—does no favours to children from deprived backgrounds. Instead it segregates the workforce and impairs social mobility. Bad at any time, this is appalling now that globalisation has increased competition in the workplace.

Many of Britain's developed-country rivals—Canada, France, Japan—expect far more of their children, insisting that they master a wide core of academic subjects. Germany, which educates about a third of its least gifted children in vocational schools, has recently reformed the national curriculum so that all pupils must meet minimum standards in literacy, numeracy and science, and more able students must learn a foreign language too. Some American states, such as Texas, have recently brought in compulsory academic examinations in maths, all three sciences, English language and literature, history and geography. Others, such as Massachusetts, have long expected 16-year-olds to sit exams in science, maths, English and history.

British education is shallow as well as narrow. That was the conclusion of three academics who were asked by Reform to compare the exam papers set in three subjects—English (or the equivalent national language), maths and science—in England, France, Germany, Japan, America and Canada. They praised the literacy exams in England for offering pupils the opportunity to shine, but panned the maths papers for leading them in very small steps through problems that were easier than in other countries, and criticised the science papers for their lack of rigour and for steering students towards the right answers.

More spirit-sinking news came on December 2nd from the University and College Union (UCU), a trade group for lecturers. Analysing data from the OECD, a rich-country think-tank, a UCU report found that Britain has fallen further behind its competitors on another measure. It now educates a smaller proportion of its 15- to 19-year-olds than it did in 1995 (see chart), a dubious accolade shared only by France among the 30 OECD members. Just 71% of Britain's late teenagers are in education, compared with 86% in France. America, for example, had the same proportion of 15- to 19-year-olds in school or university as Britain in 1995. That share has fallen by one percentage point in Britain and risen by eight percentage points in America.

The picture was similar among 20- to 29-year-olds. The proportion in full- or part-time education in Britain fell from 18% to 17% over the time, whereas the OECD average rose from 18% to 25%. Portugal was the only other country to record a drop.

For all that spending on schools, both secondary and primary, has shot up, outcomes on the younger front are discouraging too. The results of national tests taken by 11-year-olds were published on December 1st, and the number of schools where all pupils achieved the minimum standard expected has slumped by a fifth. For the first time since the tests began in 1995, the number of pupils leaving primary school with an acceptable grasp of English fell. Maths and science just held their own.

When Labour won power in 1997, it did so on the promise that education would be its highest priority. In 1999 Peter Mandelson told the Labour Party annual conference that equality of opportunity was not enough: equality of aspiration mattered too. How true. But it is the lack of ambition among his political colleagues, even more than among children from poor backgrounds, that is failing the country now.