Are our schools really failing?

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The received wisdom in parts ofthe media is as follows:

State schools are getting worse.
The £37 billion spent on them (a 74% increase in real terms) since 1997 has been wasted.
There was once a ‘golden age’ when grammar schools reigned supreme, giving poor children ladders out of poverty and into the best universities, and all our people were educated to a higher standard than they are today.

In 1959, at the height ofthe ‘golden age’:

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