WHEN Tony Blair became Prime Minister, his priorities for government were absolutely clear. Whenever he was asked in the 1997 election campaign about his vision for a “new” Britain, his mantra was “education, education, education”. And Mr Blair clearly meant what he was saying, at least in the literal sense.
Launching his nationwide election tour last week from his Sedgefield constituency, he consciously repeated the same stirring words that he used eight years before: “Education, education, education — now and forever the key to the door of Britain’s future success. Education has been, is, and will be the driving mission of a new Labour government.”
But while nobody could question the sincerity of the Prime Minister’s rhetorical commitment, there is far less clarity about his real educational achievements or his desire for genuine reform. It is true that education has enjoyed better treatment from the Treasury than most other government programmes but it has come a distant second to health spending. Education is budgeted to grow by 4.3 per cent annually in the ten years from 1997. This compares with the 6.5 per cent growth allowed for the NHS.
As a result, health spending by 2008 will be roughly £50 billion higher (in constant prices) than it was when Mr Blair took over, while education will receive only £25 billion more. The growth of education has fallen behind transport (bloated by the bungled nationalisation of Railtrack) and it is only marginally ahead of policing and public order. Compared with public spending as a whole, education is set to grow just one percentage point faster over this ten-year period.
In terms of financing, therefore, the priority accorded to education is far from clear. In fact, the 4.3 per cent growth of spending in Mr Blair’s era of “education, education, education” is scarcely different from the 4.0 per cent average growth from 1953 to 1996. So education in Britain will continue to lag behind most other advanced economies, even after health spending, as a proportion of national income, has caught up with the European average by the end of this decade.
And given Michael Howard’s decision to stick to Gordon Brown’s plans for public service financing, the decisions taken by Labour on the relative importance, or otherwise, of education would also bind the Tory leader if elected.
Given all the effusive rhetoric from both parties about the importance of education, the relatively low priority it receives in their plans for public financing, especially in comparison with health, seems odd. Education is a genuine “public good”, in the sense that an improvement in every individual’s schooling benefits society as a whole. Better education contributes to the advancement of science, to social stability, to productivity, to economic growth and therefore to the whole nation’s welfare.
Why then is political support for additional education spending relatively weak in Britain? Does this matter? And would a change in government make much difference to the state of Britain’s colleges and schools?
The tepid political support for education can be explained first because the proportion of young people in Britain’s population is gradually falling, while the ranks of the elderly are steadily swelling, although the crossover point when the over-65s will exceed the under-20s will not arrive until about 2025.
Secondly, because old people tend to vote, while children cannot and their parents are often less diligent voters than their sickly grandparents. Thirdly, because British voters do not seem to care much about education — or perhaps they are simply less dissatisfied with the schools and colleges than the metropolitan chattering classes believe they should be.
In the latest MORI poll, only 30 per cent of voters mentioned education as one of the most important issues facing Britain today. This was well behind health and immigration, and a statistical dead-heat with crime. Indeed, there has been only one period in the past 30 years when education has been regarded as important by more than 50 per cent of British voters. That was the spring of 1997, the very moment when Mr Blair’s mantra began.
Does the lack of political focus on education matter? The answer is yes. Although government statistics purport to show that British children are now better educated than their counterparts in most European countries, there are serious methodological doubts about the international comparisons often cited by the government, so much so that British figures have been excluded as statistically unreliable from the latest OECD surveys.
The claims about a well-educated population are contradicted by surveys of employers, who find numeracy and literacy relatively poor in Britain — not to mention the prevalence of street-crime and yobbish behaviour, which suggests widespread failure in the socialising function of schools. Meanwhile, Britain’s universities will decline inexorably if they continue to be starved of funds.
But would a change in government have any impact on education in the next five years? If we judge by the almost identical spending plans of the two main parties or the dismal educational performance of previous Tory governments, the answer must be no.
However, if Tory manifesto promises could be taken at face value, then three important differences would emerge. First, the Tories might reverse the Labour emphasis on quantity rather than quality. Labour’s target of 50 per cent enrolment in higher education and the plans to bring ever-younger children into universal schooling, are an enormous drain on limited educational resources.
Secondly, the Tories seem to understand that improvements in education are as much a matter of policy as of investment. Their emphasis on discipline, their willingness to create special schools for disruptive pupils and children with special needs, their willingness to set absolute standards for GCSEs and A levels, rather than encouraging grade inflation, could all strengthen education.
Thirdly, the Tories do not seem to share Labour’s prejudice in favour of investment, rather than current spending. The fastest-growing components of education spending under Labour have been school construction and purchases of computers but standards might improve faster if the Government were to hire more teachers and pay them more.
There is no essential difference between Tory and Labour policies when it comes to the fundamental flaws of education: a comprehensive system unable to cater for the brightest or most difficult pupils; an unresolved contradiction between equality and excellence; a failure to make serious decisions on university funding. In general, they refuse to make education a genuine priority.
“Education, education, education,” is likely to remain a mantra for all British politicians during general elections. But do not expect much to happen in between.
