Half of us are barely literate and it's getting worse
The Government claims our school pupils are doing brilliantly - but the facts say otherwise, writes Alasdair Palmer.
The most graphic illustration of the failure of the British education system is the vast number of people who, despite 11 years of full-time schooling, cannot read, write and add up properly. The Government's own figures show that 5.2 million workers in Britain today are "functionally illiterate", and 6.8 million are "functionally innumerate".
"Functional illiteracy" is not the same as the blank inability to read anything – but the bar for competence ...
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