Adam Smith Institute

According to Shadow Universities Secretary David Willets, the government's new £165 million package of student support will disproportionately benefit middle-class students and do little to help the poor.

As The Times says, the reforms are meant to encourage more working class students into higher education by providing a "means-tested student maintenance grant, which covers living costs but not fees" and which "will be available to students whose parents earn up to £60,000. Previously the cap was £39,305." Willets says that the most affluent families will gain £150m from the scheme, while those from poorer families will only gain £15m.

I can't say whether Willets' sums are right, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if they were. State-financed universities have always represented a particularly perverse kind of redistribution of wealth – from the working poor to the unproductive offspring of the middle and upper classes. Essentially, people on low incomes who didn't go to university (and whose children probably won't either) pay taxes so that better-off kids can lounge around for three years at someone else's expense. The costs of university do not fall only the beneficiaries of higher education, then, but on taxpayers at large.

I'd like to see British higher education given a substantial overhaul. First of all, universities should be freed from state control and allowed to charge fees as they see fit, but helped (through the tax system) to establish endowment funds to support poorer students. 

To meet any gaps in funding, the government-backed student loans system could be expanded, with loans gradually paid back as students become taxpayers. Such a system would ensure that anyone able to go to university could afford to go to university – but knowing they would eventually be footing the bill, young people would be encouraged to work hard and pursue useful degrees that would boost their future earning power. Turning students into paying customers would also make them demand a higher standard of education than they currently settle for.

Introducing these reforms would certainly not be easy, but the benefits would justify the effort.

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.