The overall pass rate for this year’s GCSE results was an astounding 98.4%. Instead of celebrating this as faculty brilliance, we’re all berating it as a farce. New Labour’s (now very old) mantra of ‘education, education, education’ needs to be seen as reality, not political theory, and these figures apparently do just that.

It’s very easy to jump on the Daily Mail lets-all-hang-ourselves bandwagon but how long will it be before the top schools abandon this rubber stamp in favour of a more robust measurement of education? Two years? Five? When the stat hits 99%?

But the results also show greater feast and famine than ever before. Nearly 2 million children are leaving school this year without a GCSE above grade D. Speaking in the Sunday Times, Tony Little, headmaster at Eton College, said GCSEs were now like a ‘factory process’ that were tailored towards success in school league tables.

Anyone believe that current school leavers with GCSEs are better prepared than their predecessors?