THE HISTORY:
School results have been getting better—especially for the poor
Nobody disputes that more pupils in England have been passing exams in recent decades. And nobody who has looked at the results in any detail can dispute, either, that the rise in GCSE success has been especially marked among pupils from poorer homes. As the chart shows, their pass rate has shot up from just 23 per cent, for children born in the mid-1980s, to 65 per cent for the mid-1990s generation.