It does not matter whose figures you accept. Education in the UK is and will now always be largely second rate. Here’s why:
1. 93% of children are educated in the State system. This has a number of fundamental flaws. Firstly it is administered by local authorities. These organisations are particularly inept in just about everything they do. There is no earthly reason why State education should be under the control of local authorities. Central government is bad enough at providing basic services but to involve multitudes of Town Hall busybodies in something as important as education is simply daft.
2. Because of the fact that education is compulsory there are large numbers of children attending school who do not want to be there and, more importantly, whose parents attach no importance to them being properly educated. Inevitably these scholars disrupt the learning of those who do want to learn. The lack of selective education in almost all of the country means that there is no way to separate the two communities. Strangely an article published only today demonstrates that large numbers of parents believe it is perfectly acceptable, or even their “right” to add to their children’s already extensive holidays by taking them out of school during term time:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-24734692
3. There is certainly an element of difficulty in schools where large numbers of pupils do not speak English as a first language, or at all. There are added difficulties where children who allegedly do so arrive at school with no groundwork having been laid by their parents to prepare them for primary education.
4. Among many pupils and their parents, learning is not considered “cool”. In fact many children are positively castigated for being bright and their level of achievement obviously drops.
The wonder is that any children who go through the UK’s State system manage to gain anything like a decent education at all. All credit to those that do.
My “source” for these contentions is that I have spent some time observing classroom activities in a number of State schools since about 2001. Atlanta is quite right. The “all must have prizes” philosophy which infests most State schools is completely at odds with a competitive ethos which prevails in private schools (and, for that matter, in most worthwhile professions for which schools should be preparing their charges).