The human brain seems to play tricks on itself when it comes to such questions. Just as summers were always hot and Christmases often white when viewed through the rose-tinted spectacles of hindsight, we seem to think that the time when we were young was an era of irreproachably high standards that have since slipped away.

As any teacher will tell you, changes come thick and fast in the world of education, so the way children are taught is, in many respects, quite different to how we were schooled years ago. Some changes don't last beyond the next General Election, and when it comes to measuring the efficacy of others, an extremely long-term view has to be taken.

One invaluable tool in reckoning the value of different fashions in education is the ongoing National Child Development Study, being carried out by the Centre of Longitudinal Studies at the Institute of Education. Described as one of the crown jewels of social research, for 50 years it has been following the lives of 17,000 people born in the same week in 1958.

To celebrate its half-century, the report, Now We Are 50, has just been published, giving detailed analysis of the long-term effects of childhood, family background and education on the life chances of a generation.

The group of 1958 has been compared with other groups, born in 1946 and 1970, and the picture the report paints is a snapshot of social change over five decades, since Harold Macmillan's famous 1957 declaration: "Most of our people have never had it so good".

He could not have foreseen the explosion in the standard of living the British population would enjoy following those years of post-war austerity.

When they were 11 years old, more than half of the children of '58 lived in rented accommodation, and 42 per cent in council houses. One in 10 households had a fridge and one in three had a car. Computers were a novelty still in the future, and rulers, compasses and protractors were used in the classroom.

In 1965, the average class size was 37, and a fifth of the group were taught in classes of more than 30. The Government was piloting comprehensive education, but this group of children mostly did the 11-plus exam, which was about to be abolished. Only 12 per cent of the group did well enough to go to grammar school. As they got to 14, the school leaving age was raised to 16. Only 14 per cent of men and 11 per cent of women had achieved a degree by the age off 33, despite the fact that this group had experienced secondary schooling during the expansion of higher education and creation of the newer universities.

This generation of students paid no tuition fees and received grants towards living expenses.

Of the children born in 1958, about two-thirds left school at 16, and by the time they'd reached the age of 33, 15 per cent still had no educational qualifications. Another 10 per cent were educated to sub-O-level standard and another third had no qualification above
O-level.

In other words, compared to today's young people, who mostly stay in education until the age of 18, the group born in 1958 didn't do well out of the education system as it was in the '60s and '70s.

Those born 50 years ago had rudimentary basic skills, with a sample tested for numeracy and literacy at the age of 37 proving that almost half had very poor number skills and six per cent had difficulty reading. These were the members who were most likely to be unemployed.

When the group left school, about 85 per cent went straight into a job or apprenticeship to a trade. Apprenticeships took between five and seven years, and almost all of them were taken up by boys – with the exception of hairdressing. One third of apprentices failed to complete their training.

All this seems to indicate that although many complaints are made about today's education system – large class sizes, poor literacy and numeracy, drop-out rates, etcetera – things weren't too good in the past, either.

Far from thinking we have to turn back the clock, perhaps we need to come up with some new ideas for the future.

The next survey to be released based on data from the National Child Development Study will be published later in the year. It will analyse how childhood circumstances have affected the lives of the middle-aged group of 1958.