At the start of every new school year comes the great hand-wringing about the dismal failure of the school system to produce feedstock for technical fields of study. Fortunately, this year brought a note of optimism because overall, over 70% of matriculants passed the state-set examinations last year. There was the usual concern about the drop in standards. The horrible schools did very poorly, the good ones passably, and the excellent ones (most of which aren’t run by government, thank goodness) did brilliantly… (more)