British Educational system

[Sorastro]

As with most things British especially during the last century our education system was the envy of the world...not so now I fear!

Yes the British elite and the "foreign" elite still send their kids to Oxbridge, because, unlike the plebs, they can afford to give their child {and receive} an A1 education, but it also puts them on that plateau of "It's not so much what you know it's who you know" that will help steer them through life, but what of the standards of education for the rest of us, are the standards dropping in our state schools {and they are} because of lack of funds, cr*p teachers or is it mainly because the vast majority of kids today are becoming unteachable, or all of the above. I only have to stand in the playground waiting to pick up my 6 year old granddaughter and look around at the state {yes the state} of some of those other kids parents and I despair. My granddaughter absolutely loves school and she excels in most things, but listening to her talking about "her day" at school she innocently mentions certain children in her class who are already starting to disrupt classes and has no interest in learning, after all why should they learn, they want to be just like their mum, 3 kids at the age of 20, knows Russian words that end in off, tattooed up the wazoo and living on state handouts, what's the point of an education?
To these people taking their child to school is not educational, it's just somewhere to dump their kids so they can sit watching Jeremy Kyle all day. They didn't bother to learn at school so it's not going to benefit the kid, that's the way they look at it.
When I was at school there were subjects I liked and ones I disliked, but when I left school I did retain quite a bit of what I was taught. you only have to watch quiz shows like "The Chase" or "Tipping Point" to know what I mean. I don't profess to know all the answer but subjects like history the answers NEVER change and to see contestants struggling with the simplest of questions, even if you don't know the answer, and I didn't, you can work it out by deduction if given multi choice answers, like this one the other day:-

Tipping Point....... Which of these was the last battle fought in the English civil war,
Battle of Worcester.....Battle of Hastings.....Battle of Waterloo....Contestant answer, Battle of Waterloo.

American Who wants to be a millionaire {first question}..... Which animals were used by Hannibal to cross the Alps,
Rhinoceri.......Elephants.......Llamas.......Chihuahuas..... Contestant answer, Llamas.

Then again have the chavvy mums and their drug addled boyfriends got a point, Is it worth it? I feel really sorry for the kids of today, will my granddaughter and her classmates ever eventually "make it" in life,  and if they do would it be down to a good education.