very few pupils left Junior (Primary) School unable to read, write, and do sums to a good standard
The illiteracy rate is virtually unchanged today from that in the mid-1950s. Two parliamentary inquiries in the 60’s and 70’s, one chaired by Shirley Williams if I recall correctly, tried to address the problem without success. Working from memory as the stats are not to hand, I recall that the only meaningful improvement in this rate was during the early years of the Blair government. there has been no improvement since about 2005.
I’m afraid the past when we had many jobs that could be filled by the functionally illiterate, gave people a false sense of a rose-coloured past, but the stats is clear if you look for them. In the 50’s many rural secondary schools had a very high rate of functional illiteracy, but taught agricultural methods quite successfully.