Forget schoolchildren - they can't even make money count

The news on the education front just gets better and better. In recent weeks we have learned that English schoolchildren have slipped from 4th to 14th in the International Science understanding stakes. Then we discovered that their use of English as a native language places them somewhere lower than Upper Volta. Today, the icing was added to the cake. Now, we discover, we are worse at maths than virtually the whole of the developed world.
Since the last set of similar statistics were compiled in 2000 and since we are regulalrly assured by Not so Flash Gordon that we splurge the best part of 50 billion per year on education, everyone - except our numerically-challenged children ofcourse - can work out that we have spent the grand total of 300 billion to date. And what do we have to show for it?
A generation of victims of child-centered education that is barely literate, and is so innumerate that it probably can't work out what the total lack of shool-based exercise has done for its obesity rates compared with preceding generations.
Yet, as usual, the response of Ed Balls and his cohorts was a precise echo of his unfortunate name. It wasn't that we were actually slipping down the international league tables. it was more a case of the statistics being wrong. If you did the calculations the same way as the British educational establishment, why we are still the nest educated country in the world. And we have the the continually improving exam results to prove it.
Strange that, isn't it. Six years ago when the OECD ranked English pupils comfortably in the top 10 in each of the core subjects, the Educational establishment was keen to puff itself up and bask in its pupils' reflected glory.
The bright side of all this for our Gordon of course, is that the people likley to be set the task of investigating the current illegal funding crisis will have, for the most part, have been educated under his watch as Chancellor and PM. So, the chances of their actually making anything add up, let alone stick, are very remote.