As others raced ahead, Britain's schools stood still For anyone who cares about Britain's future, the latest report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development should be deeply concerning. This respected international institution assessed 166,000 people across 24 countries, in order to determine standards of numeracy and literacy among young and old alike. It found that the quality of basic education which this country gives its young people has not improved a whit over the past 40 years - the only Western nation in which this is the case. Residents of England aged between 16 and 24 now rank 22nd out of 24 for literacy and 21st for numeracy. To give some extent of the decline, their counterparts aged 55 to 65 came third and 11th respectively. This is all the more troubling since we live in a world, as the OECD's research confirmed, where knowledge and prosperity are more tightly connected than ever. Yet where others have overhauled their education systems to face the challenges of a post-industrial age, and to compete with the emerging economies of the East, we have remained stagnant and complacent. As a result, those not fortunate enough to go to the best schools can look forward to worse jobs, worse prospects and worse lives. Where to place the blame? The vandalism inflicted by Labour under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is clear: pupils were told that soaring grades were an indication of genuine improvement, and parents that the squandering of billions could buy success without proper structural reform. Both now stand exposed as outright lies, even if Tristram Hunt, the party's new education spokesman, refuses to accept as much. Yet this was the culmination of a decades-long process, starting with the introduction of the comprehensives and destruction of the grammars. Both Tory and Labour governments succumbed to an ideology that left the educational establishment in the hands of those determined to level down, rather than build up. Michael Gove is making his best efforts to reverse this trend - although there are limits to what any one man can do. The extent to which the old impulses still run through the system can be seen in the recent strident criticism of independent schools, and even of those parents who spend their own money to make up for the deficiencies of poor state schools. The fact that there are now twice as many tutors as teachers in England (though there is of course some overlap) suggests not that parents are selfish, but that they are desperate to give their children the knowledge schools are failing to impart. The Prime Minister has often talked of a "global race"; the OECD figures suggest it is one in which we are lagging well behind.