A nation needs a well-educated workforce. That should (67) Britain, whose young people are struggling to keep up with their counterparts (同龄人) abroad. An inter-national study published on December 7th found that the reading skills of British secondary school pupils have (68) those of children (69) in France and Germany. (70) three years the OECD(经济合作与发展组织) tests the (71) abilities of 15-year-old children in its member states and some other countries. The aim is to discover not what pupils know (72) how well they can (73) what they have learned in reading, mathematics and science. British pupils (74) relatively well in science, performing better than the OECD (75) , but in reading and mathematics they are mediocre(平庸). Around a fifth of British students cannot read (76) . In the highest-achieving OECD countries, just 7% of pupils fail to (77) the basics.
Though ever greater (78) of British students are passing exams and progressing to university, those (79) by the OECD in 2009 did (80) worse than the students in 2006 and much worse than those in 2000. That is almost entirely due to (81) performance in Wales, (82) pass rates in school-leaving exams have also been falling (83) with those in other parts of Britain.
Helpfully, the study contains (84) into how the systems that educate pupils best differ from the rest. They have raised teachers’ (85) by it harder to become and remain one. They publish individual schools’ results, and allow the best more autonomy than the others. These lessons have been learned by Michael Gove, the education secretary, and now (86) his to-do list.