In response to Chris McGovern: Got nearly half the answers wrong? Congratulations, that’ll be an A-grade, Mark wrote:

If you went by exam results these past few years, you might think we had an up and coming generation of Shakespeares and da Vincis.

But of course we haven’t.

What has happened is that the state has thrown billions into education and wants to show voters good results. So there have been ‘good’ results.

This is just the same kind of process that operated in the Soviet Union with grain and tractor production figures.

I don’t say that any orders have gone out to make this so – though they might have – but that the bureaucrats who run the education system ‘know’ what they have to do if they want to keep the money flowing and keep their jobs.