Parents in recent years are much more interested in their children's academic prowess than parents in the 1970s and 80s were. There was very much a culture back then that children should simply muddle along in primary school and KS3 rather than being clever, and that a hard working child of average intelligence was better than a high ability child who was deemed to be lazy or badly behaved. Parents back then often had little idea of what their children were learning, or should be learning, at school. School reports were heavily opinionated due to the lack of national benchmarks in academic subjects. 


The nation is awash with KS2 level English, maths, and science books for use at home, but if a parent asked for such books in the 1980s then they would probably have received a funny look by the bookseller as such books didn't really exist back then.

Parents in recent years are much more interested in their children's academic prowess than parents in the 1970s and 80s were. There was very much a culture back then that children should simply muddle along in primary school and KS3 rather than being clever, and that a hard working child of average intelligence was better than a high ability child who was deemed to be lazy or badly behaved. Parents back then often had little idea of what their children were learning, or should be learning, at school. School reports were heavily opinionated due to the lack of national benchmarks in academic subjects. 


The nation is awash with KS2 level English, maths, and science books for use at home, but if a parent asked for such books in the 1980s then they would probably have received a funny look by the bookseller as such books didn't really exist back then.