Certainly you will read reports in the Daily Mail and other such lie-sheets, ...

Well, if you will read those rags, Martin, what do you expect.  I prefer things like the Times Ed. Supplement, the Economist, the Guardian/Independent/Times. 

... that education is far less effective now than it was in the 'good old days', ...

if this is what you think, why not say so rather than hiding your views behind pretentious posts like you've produced here?

But it doesn't seem to be the case if you look at, say, the GCSE examination statistics.  My own experience confirms that education has improved.  I have been favourably impressed with my children's comprehensive education - much better than my grammar school education.

Now, did you do GCSEs, Martin?  Or 'O'-levels?  Did you do modular courses with module-related exams?

You seem to equate 'better education' with 'uplifting the less academic', but they are two completely different issues.  Children at school today will do topics at age 11 that you and I were doing at 14 or 15, and topics we were doing at 11 when they are 14 or 15.  A science (physics) teacher of my acquaintance showed me an 'AS'-level syllabus where the students were dealing with material that he had done in his first year at university, alongside material that he and I had studied pre-'O'-level.

Anyone who tries to compare GCSEs with what came before them is comparing different things, and I think that this is where you seem to have a problem.  You like things to be black and white in terms of comparison, whereas the 'real' world isn't that simplistic.

Oh, re. materials I can't produce.  I have no idea whether any of the 80s and 90s material is online - and if it is, I'm not really sure where to look since I can't remember the report titles or authors (we usually read exec. summaries passed down the 'chain of command'.)  What you have to remember is that true comprehensive education is all about mixed-ability teaching across the board, and no British school has followed this since the latter part of the 20th century.  Selection (aka streaming) is now the norm (as I'm sure your children discovered), and pupils can move up and down the streams until about age 14, when exam requirements lay down externally-established limitations to such movement.