ON OCTOBER 8th a scary report from the OECD, a think-tank, revealed that young English people are less numerate and less literate than most of their peers in the developed world (see article). Worse still, England turned out to be one of the few countries in which the young are less capable than the old.

Conservative politicians made hay. The 16- to 24-year-old cohort is the product of a Labour government, they pointed out. But it is not quite that simple. English people aged between 25 and 34, who were at school in a Tory era, are nearly as far behind their peers abroad (see chart). Only the oldest age group (of 55- to 65-year-olds) fared better than the OECD average. If English schools are failing, they have been failing for a while.

One of the oddest findings is how adept 35- to 44-year-olds seem to be. English people in that age group, unlike their contemporaries elsewhere, appear to be more numerate than younger folk.

Since this is the OECD’s first adult test, it is hard to know for certain what is going on. Most straightforwardly, English schools may have got worse. Or middle-aged English people may be better at refreshing their skills and picking up new ones, suggests Andreas Schleicher of the OECD. David Guile of the Institute of Education, part of the University of London, points out that they could have taken up training programmes introduced under the previous government.

Britain differs from countries like France, Spain and Japan in not having a “job for life” culture. Sacking middle-aged workers is easier than almost anywhere else in the developed world. Could this, as well as slipping school standards, explain the peculiar keenness of people in their 40s? We note in passing that the average Economist reader is 47.