Those happy schoolgirls who leap into the air each August rejoicing over their A-levels really ought to be sunk in gloom, marching angrily with their parents to Westminster and Whitehall to demand an apology.

For they have been horribly cheated, and they are now about to be trapped in impossible debt in return for 'degrees' which will 'qualify' them to work in such exalted places as bowling alleys, pest control companies, shoe shops and estate agents.

No, no, don't start shouting at me. I didn't say they haven't toiled with heart, mind and soul for their devalued grades. I have no doubt they have been relentlessly drilled to pass their dreary modern exams. But that doesn't mean it was the right sort of work, or that it will lead to the right sort of life.

In fact, degrees are only needed for jobs such as these because there are now so many graduates that employers have decided to insist on them. Paul Wiltshire, who campaigns against Sir Anthony Blair's empty-headed scheme for mass higher education, says: 'If we raise the number of graduates being produced – in 2024, 495,000 UK applicants were accepted on to undergraduate courses – then it follows that we are likely to create a surplus of graduates.

'The jobs market has reacted by mopping up the surplus of graduates by dubiously defining more roles as being graduate-only and created a whole new market in pretend graduate roles.

'Graduates end up settling for pretend graduate roles where there is no genuine reason why you need to have studied a further three years to do the job.'

Successful A-level students at Solihull School celebrated their results on Thursday

And, of course, that is bad news for those who do not fancy getting into debt to spend another three years of their lives in classrooms and lecture halls. Jobs they could do perfectly well are not open to them unless they produce a degree certificate – even if they really are not that suited to campus life and would prefer to stay solvent.

This crazy system, copied from the USA, is the direct result of the trashing of proper state education 60 years ago. Supposedly classless America, which officially has equal high schools for all, is in fact still fiercely divided on grounds of class as well as of race.

For decades, estate agents have charged premiums on houses which are in the catchment areas of the better high schools. In any case, high school is never enough for a better job, and Americans with ambitions for their children save, often very painfully, for college fees. Now we have the same.

Last week, the Daily Mail's This Is Money website reported a survey by Santander bank which showed parents were willing to pay an average of £45,000 extra to secure a home in the catchment zone of an Ofsted-rated 'good' school.

Almost three in four parents said they would be willing to pay over the odds to live in an area where their children would be at the front of the queue for a place at such a school. This is why other surveys have shown that the 'best' comprehensives and 'academies' are highly socially selective.

As for the colleges they then go to, I suspect many of our newer universities are well below the American standard, and those that aren't are falling fast as they pursue numbers at the cost of quality.

A University Challenge team last week (and these are the brightest) had plainly never heard Wordsworth's great line, 'My heart leaps up when I behold a rainbow in the sky'. Education, education, education – oh, yeah.

I've many times reported here the disastrous fall in standards of secondary education since the 1960s, when state grammar schools were almost all destroyed.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson with students Callum Hitchen, Ali Imran and Maedeh Zare, who received their A-level results at Trafford College in Altrincham, Greater Manchester

Alas Vine & Hitchens: What's the big idea? Get the Mail's new politics podcast, hosted by columnists Sarah Vine and Peter Hitchens - wherever you listen to podcasts now. 

The few survivors, plus the fee-charging private schools, were forced to use modern diluted exams designed for comps, which make them look better than they are.

I think this is the only education reform in history which required the closure of good schools in the vain hope of creating new ones that would be better. The zealots who did this always promised that it would come right in the end.

It never has and never will. Their last effort was university expansion, and it is crumbling before our eyes.

Any political party which seriously claims to be interested in saving this country must confront this disaster head-on.

I have the eye disease glaucoma, and so I have to undergo a compulsory eye test quite often if I wish to keep my driving licence.

I think that is a very good thing, and fully support it. I really don’t see why over-70s (I’m one of them, too) shouldn’t be subject to the same rule. But in return, I’d suggest anyone of any age who is caught driving while high on illegal drugs is banned from driving for life. Age and disease are compulsory. But taking an illegal drug and then getting behind the wheel involves taking two voluntary actions which are against the law.

Reform in the Lords – that’s an idea... 

Nigel Farage says that Reform UK should have some seats in the House of the Lords

Nigel Farage plainly has right on his side when he says that Reform UK should have some seats in the House of the Lords.

By abolishing the hereditaries, and appointing platoons of cronies and toadies, the big parties have turned it into an unelected senate. Unless and until they replace it with an elected body, it ought to reflect the views of the people.

Reform won more than one in eight of the votes cast at the last election and now have their own MPs. Natural justice means they are entitled to a handful of peers.

When I heard of Mr Farage’s suggestion, I thought that Labour would probably be stupid and inept enough to say no. And lo, Labour’s portentous Defence Secretary John Healey immediately tried to squash the idea by pointing out that Mr Farage has called for the abolition of the Lords. Well, that view is also popular in the Labour Party but that hasn’t stopped hundreds of them from taking peerages.

Worse, Mr Healey said there should not be Reform peers because they might not support government policy on Russia. I have news for Mr Healey. Quite a lot of people (including me) don’t support that policy, and this is still a country where dissent is allowed in Parliament. Even if it doesn’t happen very often.