The word “satisfactory”, it has been said, is one of the more demeaning in the English language. It implies adequate but hardly inspiring. It is in this spirit that Christine Gilbert, the Chief Inspector of Schools, submitted Ofsted’s annual report yesterday. Ms Gilbert should be commended for her candour. She could have chosen to highlight that the proportion of schools considered “outstanding” has increased to 14 per cent of all institutions surveyed or that the percentage deemed “inadequate” has fallen to 6 per cent of the total. This would allow her findings to be spun as meaning that 94 per cent of schools are at an acceptable level – being outstanding, good or satisfactory. She has instead, rightly, chosen to insist that having just over one in three schools stuck at the satisfactory level is not an outcome that should cause satisfaction.

Nor should it. The story beneath the overall statistics is encouraging in part but disturbing as well. Primary schools are ranked much more positively than secondaries. Whereas more than six in ten primaries are assessed as being outstanding or good, a mere 51 per cent of schools for those aged 11 and over match that bench-mark. Even at the primary stage, about one in five children passes through the system without mastering core skills of literacy and numeracy. This stubborn minority then swiftly tune out of education in their new schools, become prone to bad behaviour and truancy, rarely recover any interest in time to secure decent GSCE grades and then drop out altogether. As Ms Gilbert argues, having 200,000 16 to 18-year-olds not in school, work or formal training can only be regarded as a significant policy failure.

These findings are not particularly original but they do demand more action. Resources have to be concentrated on those aged between 9 and 13 so that the proportion of those who move on from primary schools functionally illiterate and innumerate is diminished. The first two years of secondary education have to be reconsidered in the light of the reality that it will take a long time to raise standards towards that 100 per cent target. Secondary education appears to operate on the assumption that all pupils at all schools will enter at 11 capable of coping with a large range of subjects and teachers when, in many instances, this is inaccurate. Much more intense effort is now needed on shoring up the basics between the ages of 11 and 13 and this has to be pursued across the board – “personalised learning” will not transform children.

Ms Gilbert who, with the zeal of a Victorian social reformer, writes of the “moral purpose” that lies behind her work, also makes no apology for “the ambition and urgency”that she wants to see run through the entire structure of schooling. In more than a third of schools either or both of the effectiveness of teaching and learning or leadership and management is not good or outstanding. Yet by 2013 ministers intend to raise the school leaving age from 16 to 18.

There is a logic behind this initiative but it will only bear fruit if the numbers who are disengaged from their studies by the age of 13 are far smaller than today and the vocational qualifications are meaningful. This report highlights the vital role of the inspections regime and the compelling requirement to act on its conclusions. No one can claim that the challenge is not clear.