School days are over

Whilst visiting family this weekend, I had the opportunity to catch up with my 15 year old cousin; a precocious, intelligent, but angry boy - just your typical teenage guy. We chatted about why he shouldn't buy a Mac yet (too pricey), and whether he had a girlfriend or not (no, still too pricey). Then we started talking about school.
That was when he really opened up. Despite the decade-wide age gap between my cousin and I, and a change in government since I was at secondary school, I can see no visible improvements to the way children are currently being taught.
We chatted about how big his classes are (30-odd teenagers in one classroom sounds unbearable for all concerned), how he felt about his teachers, and how he felt about understanding what he was being taught.
As the conversation went on, it began to dawn on me that his experience merely scratched the surface of the problems surrounding the infrastructure of education in this country.
He handed me his report card; a brief look at his weaknesses and his strengths; prior to Parents' Evening later this month. I scanned his list of subjects. In separate columns next to the subjects, were four more columns each either with the initials AE, ME, and BE printed within them, and a grade for last term, and a grade for this term.
Vincent told me that they stood for Above Expectations, Meeting Expectations, and Below Expectations. Without giving too much away, the AEs and the MEs were almost equally balanced out, with a few BEs scattered onto the page. This was great, the kid seemed to be doing OK in school - but then I looked closer. Next to one subject, he was achieving a B last term, and as a result he was Above Expectations. Scan further along, and he was still achieving a B, (all in all good news), but in the next column along, it appeared he was Meeting Expectations.
My immediate thought was "Should he not be set new goals? How could someone who was exceeding expectations last term, not be set new goals and pushed to his maximum potential? How could he be meeting expectations if he was exceeding them last term?"
It dawned on me then, that my cousin was another student, another number, lost in a sea of students struggling against the odds set out for them.
Vincent's results proved that he had potential but instead of nurturing this, his school had a 'let him get on with it' attitude. This makes me exceptionally angry.
Since the move towards a literally more Conservative government who have promised to use education as a way to break class systems and patterns, there appears to be no visible efforts to actually help schoolchildren when it comes down to it.
It makes me think that there are thousands more students out there receiving the same lax treatment from their schools, which for whatever reasons, aren't helping students gain the most out of their education. And all this, in the midst of the current coalition government trying to get rid of  "mickey mouse" qualifications so that people can once more be packaged into neat little boxes ready to be served up at the end of their 18 year education.
I don't blame the teachers in any way, shape or form. The average class size in a state-funded secondary school is said to be 20.4, but clearly Vincent's school falls into the 6.6 percent of schools which have classes of one teacher for every class of 30+ pupils. I've heard first-hand from teachers who have worked around the clock marking homework and planning lessons, and their frustration at their lack of time and resources to help struggling students who are destined to fall into the same pattern their predecessors have.
So with a lack of resources, a lack of teachers, and yet more cutbacks, how do you solve a problem like the school system?
The answer is clearly, yet to be discovered.