Adam Smith Institute

Wednesday's Times carried the story that demand for places at independent schools is at its highest in five years, despite above inflation rises in fees and the worsening economic situation. Yesterday's Times reported that thousands of children are set to miss out on their first choice state primary school this year – in some places as many as a quarter of students are to be disappointed. These two pieces of news are not unrelated.

Parents care about where their child goes to school, and want the best for them. In increasing numbers, they are realizing that the state system cannot deliver this and are turning to the private sector instead. Of course, that's fine for families who can afford to pay an average £11,000 a year in fees, but it does leave the less advantaged in a bit of a pickle. They probably cant afford to move into the catchment area of a good state school or pay to go private. They will be stuck with the school they are allocated to by their local authority, regardless of how bad it is.

It doesn't have to be like this. First of all, there are things you can do to improve standards in existing schools. Give them the freedom from regulation and targets that they need to innovate and tailor teaching to the pupils in front of them. Put headteachers back in charge of discipline and expulsions and let them deal with staff pay, using incentives if they want to. Then make them accountable to parents, not bureaucrats.

And that means giving parents a real and effective choice over where to send their children. As in Sweden, the independent sector needs to be encouraged to open more schools, which would be eligible for state-funding on a per-capita basis. As in Denmark, groups of parents should be able to group together, demand their share of state funding, and set up their own schools. The real key here is to create many more good school places, so that the competitive pressures of parent choice can truly be effective. 
 

Last week lots of teachers went on strike because they thought the 2.4 percent pay rise they were being offered by the government was not enough (the NUT wanted 10 percent). Even though only one in four of the teachers' unions called the strike, with only a quarter of the NUT voting in favour and only one in ten teachers supporting it, 5000 schools were closed and 4,500 had their classes disrupted. And this with exams fast approaching.

I liked Alice Thompson's take on this in Friday's Telegraph:

Here's a really good lesson, one I am sure you will all want your children to learn. If you don't like having to eat salad or you don't feel like discussing frogspawn in biology, if you hate swimming or think it is unfair to have Double Maths on a Monday morning, then go on strike. It's easy: just sit on your desk and refuse to move, or don't come in at all - go shopping or play football instead. If the teachers complain, you can explain that it is the only way you can get your point across, that nothing ever happens through negotiation, and confrontation is the best way forward.

If the head teacher tells you that these are the rules and that the majority of pupils abide by them, stick two fingers up. Why shouldn't you disrupt everyone else's lives? If you don't look after yourself, no one else will. The more attention you draw to yourself, the better. Get the camera crews in, parade up and down the high street. It doesn't matter if most of the other pupils want to negotiate a deal to have chips instead of salad one day a week, or change Double Maths to a Tuesday. That would be a pathetic compromise

To be honest, some teachers definitely do deserve more money. They do a tough and vitally important job. But on the other hand, some teachers don't even deserve the money they're getting at the moment. In a sensible system, teachers' pay would be decided by each individual school, who would factor local living expenses, the teacher's qualifications and perhaps their performance into the salary.  Yet because education is nationalized, so is pay-bargaining, meaning everyone has to get the same pay rise. And so we get national strikes when that rise isn't high enough.

It's yet another reason why we need a localised education voucher system like the one in Sweden. Our recent report, Open Access for UK Schools, tells you everthing you need to know.    

There was a protest across the road from the ASI last night. Not directed at us, but rather at our neighbours, the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

There is plenty to protest about. Like the fact that Britain has plummeted down the international league tables of school performance in maths, literacy and science. Or the fact that 350,000 pupils a year fail to get five good GCSEs including maths and English. Or even the fact that children in deprived areas do far worse than those in wealthy ones, with the gap growing wider.

But the protestors weren’t there about that. They were protesting about one of the good things the department is doing – its city academies programme. More specifically, they were protesting against the new academy which is due to replace Pimlico School in September. Frankly, their opposition puzzles me.

After all, city academies (independently run state schools) do much better than the schools they replace. Their test scores and GCSE results are improving much faster than the national average, even though they admit more pupils with special educational needs or eligible for free school meals than their area average. Most tellingly, existing academies are three times oversubscribed, which is to say a lot of parents want to send their kids to them (a good indicator of quality, in my opinion).

The funny thing is, the reason the protestors don't like academies is also the main reason for their success: they are free from local authority control. They have more power to shape their own curriculum, to hire and reward staff, and to deal with unruly pupils than do other state schools. Rather than being weighed down by rules and regulations, they can innovate and tailor tuition to their pupils' needs.

Academies are not perfect, of course. They should be even freer from the state. They should focus less on fancy new buildings and more on teaching. Most importantly, they should be much easier to set up, so that more children get to attend them. But whatever the protestors say, the country needs more academies, not less.
 

66. "Schools should provide our children a risk-free environment."

There is no such thing as a risk-free environment. There are degrees of risk and there are ways of managing risk. Growing up is not a risk-free zone. Children learn by making mistakes. They hurt themselves and each other at play. Each day has its coterie of bumps and bruises and grazes. On more serious occasions bones are broken.

Schools cannot be risk-free. They have hard surfaces and corners, desks and chairs. They feature sports and games. Children will injure themselves. There is a balance to be struck between recklessly exposing children to potential dangers and maintaining such tight controls that they have no independence or learning experience. Schools which ban marbles because people might slip on them or swallow them, or which ban conkers because a child might get struck by one, are in effect banning part of childhood.

The attempt to be risk-free leads schools to abandon foreign visits such as ski trips, and adventure holidays such as canoeing or camping. Even educational visits can be banned because of the risk of traffic accidents en route. None of this does the children any favours. It denies them learning experiences, and it even denies them the carefree fun and excitement that childhood should involve.

Part of the problem is the litigation culture which assumes that everything that happens is somebody's fault, and that someone has to pay every time any child is injured. Part of it is the health and safety bureaucracy seeking to cover itself. Anything that happens will be laid at its door, so its officials seek to anticipate all eventualities and allow nothing that could come back at them. They try to make schools places where no-one has cause to sue, or to blame health and safety officers for failing to anticipate accidents. In doing so they make schools unfit for children. Schools, like childhood itself, cannot be risk free.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the UK's new school admissions policy, it will be a political disaster.

At present, middle class parents get their kids into good state schools by moving into the catchment areas of the best ones. So the plan is to allocate school places by lottery rather than catchment, so that poorer parents have an equal chance (and so that schools would get a wider social mix too).

While the parents whose kids get into good schools under this scheme will be pleased, they won't exactly be marching on City Hall to express their pleasure. But the middle-class parents whose kids don't get into nearby good schools will be absolutely furious, and campaigning in their thousands. And poorer parents whose kids don't get into their preferred nearby school will be marching alongside them.

And whatever the merits of the policy, its inevitable result is that kids will have to travel longer distances to get to school. That means they are going to be walking or cycling greater distances along busy streets, and (come winter) more are going to get killed or injured. Already there is a spike in road fatalities around the age of eleven, when kids transfer from their neighbourhood primary schools to the more distant secondary schools. The first case of a kid being killed on one of these forced cycle trips will get the media, and parents, baying for ministers' blood.

A better policy would focus on incentivizing state schools to improve, not rationing them by throwing dice. For some ideas, ministers should check here.

52. "Schooling should seek to make children equal."

The trouble with notions such as this is that they end up by restraining the talented. Children are not equal. Some are cleverer, some are stronger, some are faster. Some have musical talent, some linguistic and some mathematical. Any attempt to impose an artificial equality on them inevitably reduces down to the lowest common denominator.

Equality is not a good thing in itself. Diversity is. People of different talents will do different things, and be of service to their fellow men and women in different ways. It should be the aim of schooling to try to avoid any waste of talent, to bring out in each child the maximum of his or her potential. This is not achieved by pretending that everyone is equal, and by denying the talented any recognition.

Children might be equally worthy of consideration as individuals; they might be equally entitled to fair treatment. They are done no service, however, if they are taught that a poor performance is the same as an excellent one. Schools which avoid competitive sports or prize-giving ceremonies do their children no favours. The real world outside school is not like that, and they will be ill-prepared for it.

Even equality of opportunity has its limits. Some children will have more thoughtful or more loving parents. Some will have educational opportunities for foreign travel because their parents choose such holidays. Others will have more access to books because their parents keep them about the house. The ultimate logic of total equality of opportunity is the state battery farm. It is, however, a worthwhile goal for society to try to develop the potential of each child, and not to discriminate against any particular groups.

If children are diverse in their talents and abilities, then schooling itself should be diverse, enabling the parents of each child to find an education suited to it.

48. "A university or college education is a public good that society should pay for."

There's truth in the first part of this. Most of us prefer a society with educated people in it, and benefit from it. Educated people can provide services for us, and create the jobs and wealth for the future. They often also add a certain civility which enhances the lives of others.

But they already have access to the rewards of their own education. The main beneficiary of education is the recipient, directly and in measurable ways. The university or college graduate has access to a greater range of fulfilling career opportunities, and has access to much better paying jobs than their uneducated or untrained counterpart. Those who pay towards their education make one of life's very best investments – it repays them many times over in money as well as opportunity.

Someone has to pay for tertiary education. Lecturers have to be paid, buildings and facilities maintained. If this is paid out of taxation, it means that taxpayers in general pay for it, rather than just the beneficiaries of it. It means that the person who leaves school to become a casual labourer is paying higher taxes so that someone who is already better intellectually endowed will have access to better jobs and a higher income for life.

UK university education used to be "free". No tuition was charged and students were given a living allowance to support them. It was a luxury product that could only be given to one in twenty of the age group. Now students have to support themselves with the help of loans, and contribute to the costs of their education. It is much less of a luxury, and one that nearly half the age group can have access to. Education is indeed a good, and should be as widely available as possible.

The Adam Smith Institute and its supporters think that a range of policies covering every area of government is needed to improve life and prospects in Britain. We think that a flat tax would improve the economy and the range of choices open to people if they could spend more of their own money. We think that universities would do better if they secured their independence from government and were free to pursue their own admissions and tuition practices. We'd like health services that responded to the needs and priorities of patients, rather than to the targets which government and its managers preferred to deliver. We think that much of the regulatory burden could be replaced by industry wide codes of practice and a legal regimen that specified general objectives whose details could be filled in by accumulated case law of test cases and tribunal decisions.

The list of these desirable and necessary changes is a long one, but if we had to pick one out for fast-track priority action, it would probably be the schools. Long an ideological battleground, a social laboratory, and a factory for inculcating fashionable attitudes, many of the state schools have failed to bring out the full potential of their students. Indeed, all too many have even failed to equip them with the basic educational skills needed for a decent life.

It is not that state-produced education needs to be changed; it needs to be ended. Schools should be independent, setting their objectives according to the wishes of parents, headteachers and governors. It should not be a decision of government to replace A-level examinations by a certificate, or to abolish oral tests from language qualifications. It should be up to the school to decide which exams are appropriate for its students, and for various exam boards to offer different alternatives.

City academies are not the answer, and neither are grammar schools. Both are part of the answer because the desired outcome is of a variety of different types of school so that parents can choose one they find suitable. Government's role should not be that of running schools and employing teachers, but of ensuring that everyone has access to a decent and appropriate education. If they were allowed to spend the state funding in schools they choose, like the Swedish model, all parents would be able to choose quality education for their children.

This should be coupled with moves to make it very easy for new schools to be set up, whether by parents and teachers getting together, or by educational organizations taking the initiative. The key factors are free choice for parents and a wide range of choices for them. Yes, we need all the policy changes in other areas, but we need this one most of all, and we need it soon.

I imagine that many reacted as I did to the news that a minimum of five hours of high culture is to be included in schools. These ministers come and go, making these announcements as they pass, but little happens on the ground. I wonder if these 5 hours will come before or after the compulsory 3 hours of sport previously promised (but not happened)? Or maybe they'll come after the compulsory cookery hours to be introduced? Perhaps they could be fitted around the promised lessons in "What it means to be British."

Ministers and bureaucrats sit at the centre signing pieces of paper to commit schools to each popular fancy, while hapless teachers shudder and groan at each straw added to an already over-burdened and top-heavy curriculum. Then the fuss dies down, the gloss wears off, and there are no more column inches to be gained, so the initiative is quietly forgotten.

Isn't there a case for giving teachers more discretion in this? Shouldn't head-teachers draw up proposals and put them to parents to see what they think of them? Couldn't education be decentralized so that local schools could offer an education they thought suitable. That way lies parental choice, with the money following the child. That way lies the transformation of education from a monolithic state system into one which tailors itself to the needs of parents and children and the talents of teachers.

In the meantime, would anyone care to guess what the next ministerial initiative will add to the school timetable?

34. "Education is a right, not something to be bought and sold."

Education is bought and sold. It costs money to produce, because resources and personnel have to be allocated to its supply. The question is not whether it should be bought and sold, but whether government should have a monopoly on the transaction.

Education has to be paid for, and people have to be directed to the production of it. This can be done, albeit inefficiently, by having government decide on the appropriate level, and by levying sufficient taxation to pay for it. Education then takes its place in the queue of demands on public funds. Extra allocation depends on political pressure, and what level of taxation the government thinks will be tolerated. It also depends on the level of public outcry at the standards which the state manages to achieve.

Alternatively it can be provided in a market way, with people spending on it what they think it is worth, and to the level which they think is advantageous. People engage in supply activity to meet, and even profit from, that demand. A wide range of choices is available for a range of widely different personal circumstances. In both cases it is a commodity, not a right. People have a scale of priorities; they have to balance how much they care to spend on housing, how much to other things such as consumer goods and holidays, and how much to personal services such as health and education. This is done very diffusely and imperfectly through the political process, where individual preferences have to be averaged.

People may decide that in a humane society, everyone capable of benefitting from education should have access to it at appropriate levels. Instead of being done through mass state provision, this can be achieved by ensuring that affordable school places are widely available, and by helping where necessary through vouchers or assisted places.

...Those who can't, teach.

Sir Roderick Floud, former vice-president of the European University Association, said the UK was a clear market leader in higher education in Europe, which by 2010 would offer a potential market of one billion people as a result of the Bologna Agreement, designed to unify higher education systems across the continent.

"I find it completely extraordinary and short-sighted that British universities are so well represented in recruitment terms in south Asia and the Far East, and so badly represented in the rest of Europe," Floud told the Guardian's Higher Education summit in London.

These fees from overseas students have in fact been the lifeblood of the entire sector for some years now: possibly a third of the entire fee income of the whole higher education sector. This isn't extraordinary nor is it short-sighted: it's simple economic rationality.

A market of one billion people in a population of just under 500 million also looks a bit of a stretch.

So does the phrase finish with "those who can't teach, administrate"? 

The future of medicine lies in the hands of researchers, doctors, and most importantly – private funders.

Imperial College London's Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBE) was founded in 2004, the first of its kind in the UK. Recently profiled in the Financial Times, it serves as a model for other institutions. Gone is the day that University researchers fear commercial involvement in their work, for as the FT put it:

IBE staff have been enterprising not only in spinning out companies – seven so far – but also in raising money to build and run a postgraduate research institute at the heart of Imperial's South Kensington campus. A particularly innovative feature of IBE's £28m fundraising was the £10m invested by the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, a charity that focuses on culture, education and the environment.

Although this foundation is a charity, the investment was purely commercial. In return, any future spin-outs or licensed agreements have a portion returning to the Foundation. Rather than relying on government funding to raise money for big capital projects, some universities also have similar deals with financial institutions.

Successful biomedical engineering programs require excellent medical schools and engineering programmes – and also private funding. This is exactly what the Johns Hopkins University has, and being the top BME programme in the US with nine spin-out companies, one can see why.

The Whitaker Foundation, established in 1976, supported the enhancement or establishment of educational programmes in biomedical engineering, especially encouraging the formation of departments. Over 30 years it has given $805 million in funding to institutions like Johns Hopkins. It is private donations such as these have made the US a world leader in this field.

Oxford University has recently launched its own IBE with a similar structure of private funding. As an alumnus of Johns Hopkins BME and a current Imperial IBE student, I’ve benefited from this structure. Other universities should follow suit and create similar opportunities, allowing a higher standard of education for more students.

According to a survey of 3,000 people commissioned by UKTV Gold, a satellite TV channel, Britons are increasingly confusing fact and fiction when it comes to their historical knowledge. While 58 percent believed Sherlock Holmes was a real historical figure, 23 percent believed Sir Winston Churchill was fictional.

On seeing the results of this survey I assumed that I had overslept and woken up on April 1st but, alas, no. It appears to have been a real survey of real people – something which, humour aside, is very worrying indeed.

Education reform, anyone?