Pre budget statements are begining to go the same way as Budget statements. When they are announced in Parliament they sound really impressive. Who cannot but applaud massive extra spending on education? The problem is that increasingly the golden glow rarely lasts longer than a few days. This time it has barely lasted 24 hours.
The assessment of the Chancellor's announcement of increased education spending by the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies is devastating. The IFS described the claim of £36 billion of new spending on education as "misleading" as most of it has already been announced and is just recyled money. In the Guardian's economics section the IFS is quoted as saying "Of the £200 per pupil he announced he is sending to schools in three months time, only £20 is new." Investment in education which has averaged 16.3% a year since 1997 is now to fall to 4.9% a year for the next five years.
Questions are now being asked about the macro management of the economy under Gordon Brown's watch. Adherrence of the Tory's public expenditure plans for the first years after Labour was elected is now revealed as a major error, holding back unecessarily the much needed programme of investment in public services and delaying the visible impact of any consequent service improvements.
As we enter a period of restraint on public spending the Government is increasingly looking to savings from supposed increased productivity in Government departments, largely from cutting staff whilst claiming that this is all about shifting resources to front line services. In reality what public sector workers and the recipients of their services are experiencing are straightforward old fashioned cuts. So now questions are being asked about the Government's competence at micro management of departments and policies.
A good example is the Chancellor's management of his own department, the Treasury. In 2006 the Treasury is aiming to save £105 million through job cuts in Customs and Revenue but has spent £106 million on external consultants to achieve it. It is estimated that thanks to job cuts in the Inland Revenue's ten largest tax processing offices there are one million unopened items of post.
If we really wanted to have an impact on educational standards it would be worth looking at David Drever's proposals in "The Red Paper on Scotland." David points to the incontrovertible research evidence that closely links significant increases in educational achievement with decreases in class size. The Tennessee STAR programme found that all pupils benefited from reduced class size but that disadvantaged children entering school with low initial attainment were the biggest winners. London University confirmed these results in their own research as did the OECD international surveys.
So if we are to give all our children the best start in life and if our aim is to match the levels of expenditure in public schools my view is that we should support the call pioneered by the Educational Institute for Scotland for a reduction in all class sizes to no more than 20 pupils. A simple demand but a significant step forward for equality in education and a real investment in education rather than spinning investment statistics.
3 Comments:
A lot of money poured into education is wasted on unnecessary stuff, like replacing blackboards with whiteboards, and then replacing those with interactive whiteboards; and schools buy things like tables and chairs and games equipment on the cheap, so they get broken and they end up spending more than they should..my secondary school bought all the science dept tables on the cheap (because the Lib Dem council wouldn't give them enough money to build the science block, being a grammar school) and after four years all the locks which held them in place had broken and now they slide across the floor when anyone leans on them (they're on wheels). They've also had to replace about half the stools I think.
The school was being run more and more near when I left by all these office staff though. The teachers used to complain about them no end. I'd love to know what they were doing, because the teachers still seemed to be compelled to spend loads of time filling in forms.
Reducing class sizes would be a great way to spend education budget money. Which means employing more teachers; there's only one problem there - a lot of teachers currently teaching, science subjects especially, aren't sufficiently qualified; just as Tory cuts in spending on training nurses led to long term problems, so there is a lack of teachers for sciences and classics (arts and humanities are ok I think, don't know about mfls).
(speaking of which, Labour cutting nurse training expenditures after the example the Tories set is pretty farcical).
The other problem is attracting enough people to primary school teaching, but primary school teaching would be less offputting with smaller classes. I had a class of 40 when I was about 9. Teaching 40 9-year-olds is not fun. Actually, that applies to secondary school age kids too to an extent...I'd quite like to go into teaching myself, and class sizes of 20 would definitely make a difference in whether I chose to or not I think. Classes of 20 would let teachers teach, rather than requiring an MA in baby sitting to not crack under the stress.
I might be wrong here also, but I think they actually reduced the education budget in effect a couple of years ago, they just started including stuff like sure start which used to come under a different heading.
"In 2006 the Treasury is aiming to save £105 million through job cuts in Customs and Revenue but has spent £106 million on external consultants to achieve it."
Hahaha.
Government contracts to consultancy firms are a (bad) joke.
Sometimes you do need to cut superfluous staff, but Brown's HMCR cuts were just a reaction to the waffle from the Tories about making massive savings from cutting "waste and bureaucracy". It's the opposition's job to badger ministers about that sort of thing, but it's the government's job to actually make sensible decisions. Of course, John Reid, who might be leadership contender number 3 (though I doubt it) is one of the worst for this.
And that "front line services" thing doesn't work at Customs and Revenue - the whole point of the department is managerial, it doesn't have branches on high streets or something like that.
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