On raising tuition fees

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Yesterday ASI fellow James Stanfield took part in a debate with Aaron Porter from the NUS, on BBC Radio 5 Live over taking the cap off university fees. James argued convincingly that government needs to stop blocking advances in universities, stop micromanaging and allow institutions to set their own fees.

He also discusses potential funding options for students and the necessity to allow universities to raise their incomes to maintain the quality of higher education in the UK.

You can listen to the debate here. 

(Aired on 18.05.10, with the debate starting at 13mins)

Entrepreneurship in education

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The UK is getting a healthy dose of much-needed innovation as a number of schools take on lessons from the research of Professor Sugata Mitra. SOLE (Self-Organised Learning Environment) is a truly radical experiment that takes the pedagog out of pedagogy, relying instead upon children’s natural curiosity.

The hole-in the-wall experiments have been a phenomenon in India, across the developing world and now in Gateshead. It originates from when Professor Mitra decided to knock a hole in the wall of Delhi office, install a computer, hook it up to the internet and observe. As Professor Mitra explains, “Groups of Indian children were able to organise their own lessons using a single computer through unsupervised access to the world wide web.”

Now children living in some of the most deprived areas of the UK are benefiting: “When I tried a similar approach in Gateshead it worked even better, for the simple reason that English is their native language, so they don’t need to struggle to overcome that barrier before they can begin to learn from the web.” Mitra is a model entrepreneur. Before entering this exciting world where education and technology meet, he started the database publishing industry (particularly the Yellow Page industry) in India and Bangladesh. That he is also applying the skills to the UK, as Professor of Educational Technology at Newcastle University, is to be celebrated.

Professor Mitra’s findings show how children socialising around technology can have impressive results. There exists an unhelpful disagreement between those that are wedded to the ideals of a liberal or progressive education. Instead, we should be focussed on what works. The entrepreneurs who are working towards the spread of this technology are heralding an exciting future, in which many of the poorest and most neglected have access to the same raw information as those of the most privileged. And instead of learning on by rote, children engage and teach each other as part of a community of learners. We need more innovation of this type.

Sadly though, such entrepreneurship is the exception, rather than the rule. This will be the case until state schools are unburdened of their stultifying regulation, re-oriented through the profit motive towards success and are bring greater competition to bear on public and private schools.

Read about it in The Guardian here, and The Telegraph here.

Too many allowances

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As it currently stands, anyone entering full-time higher education can receive financial support from the government in the form of Tuition Fee funding and Maintenance Loans, as well as the option of a means-tested grant. Additionally, if you have any form of disability or learning disorder, you are eligible for Disabled Student’s Allowance, which is available regardless of family income, and doesn’t have to be paid back.

Being dyslexic, my friend was delighted to discover that he was eligible for up to £5,161 worth of ‘specialist equipment’, and so applied for DSA. His experience is a prime example of inefficient and wasteful government.

After a needs assessment in September and the promise of a shiny new laptop, processing the case took over eight months. Nevertheless, the ‘essential’ technological support eventually arrived- in the form of a MacBook Pro, a printer and voice-recognition software. However, the delivery also included (amongst much more) a scanner, USB hub, a backpack, an ink allowance, and, strangely enough, an AA battery charger. Call me insensitive, but I simply cannot understand the necessity of all these items for a dyslexic university student.

My expressions of disapproval led to accusations of bitterness and jealousy. In fact, I was shocked that such items should be provided by the government, regardless of income- and without even being asking for. The response I received from my friend was, “But I’ve done nothing wrong- they’re free”. However, the gadgets weren’t free. They had been paid for by other people’s money –confiscated through taxation. They were funded with money that would have been put to better use were it allowed to stay in the individuals’ pockets, rather than paying for backpacks for dyslexics.

The country is saddled with a huge government deficit, and spending pressures are beginning to emerge: The Russell Group has warned that current higher education funding is unsustainable. Meanwhile, the Coalition government is keen to make savings through ‘efficiencies’ and will be unwilling to touch frontline services. However, the DSA appears to be something that could be seriously revised, without seriously disadvantaging the disabled in University.

School reform: The model for the revolution

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Fraser Nelson is spot on. No matter what is given up in the negotiations between the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats, Michael Gove’s school reforms are too important to be subject to political compromise. Fraser Nelson has championed this policy for a while now. In fact, for a good introduction to what is at stake, take a look at this excellent article in from 2008.

There are going to be tough times ahead. Needs must when the devil drives; there is no getting around the fact that there are going to be substantial cuts in government expenditure. The Conservative Party, with or without the Lib Dems, are going to have to play the villains. This is of course familiar territory, they had to pick up the pieces when the Labour Party last drove the country into the ground. Thatcher managed to (re)empower people through various means, most notably through offering the ‘right-to-buy’ for council tenants, but as with all governments, the momentum of reform slowed down and she had a penchant for centralising power, that was being abused, without dispersing it back to the people. In consequence, the Conservative Party have been caricatured as a party only of slash and burn.

Forced once again to sort out the mess left by Labour's mismanagement and profligacy, if the Conservative Party is to avoid being tarred with the same brush they need, unlike Thatcher, to also offer an alternative contemporaneous narrative. Rhetorical guff like ‘the big society’ just won’t cut the mustard. School reform could and should form the key-stone of this narrative. Assuming it is done properly, Sweden’s success can be replicated in the UK. They will also need to be radical on health, welfare and pension reforms. In all cases, they should allow taxpayers more choice and focus any exemptions/ welfare/ top-ups/ exemptions at only the most vulnerable.

Against 'free' higher education

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There is a lot to be said for the wisdom that can come with age. Looking back at how little I knew just three years ago - before I joined the ASI - it is shocking to think how little I knew. Go back a bit further and the trite nonsense that I was spouting at university makes me shudder. At least I was not alone; the place was choc-a-bloc with students, whose grasp of the real world was limited in many weird and wonderful respects. This was not helped by the fact that the majority of academics were living in Never Land. Ignorance ruled.

It therefore does not surprise me that Opinionpanel Research have found that after the first two leaders’ debates, half of students were planning to vote Lib Dem. This is not a criticism of the Lib Dem policies overall (which are not markedly worse than the Conservative ones), but on the specific Lib Dem policy that many students like: vowing to scrap university fees over six years. In effect, a policy to redistribute money from those that will never benefit from higher education to those will.

The fact that most students are of the left, and so should be opposed to regressive taxation, makes the issue perverse, and worryingly I ‘d suggest it goes beyond ‘turkeys not voting for Christmas’. After all, they have already paid (or not). Despite the easy access students have to credit, somehow 'free' higher education has come to be seen as a right. It is time for the debate against subsidised higher education to enter the popular debate. The question is: Are any politicians brave enough to face down the historically riotous students? Perhaps they should, most are too lazy to vote.

Gove: The next stage

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Many on the left have long been critical of the education reforms that took place under the Thatcher government. There are valid reasons for this, though possibly not the ones that they would cite. Despite the semblance of some market-based reforms, there was also an increase in bureaucracy and a transfer of power from LEAs to central government – parents were still not centre stage. Reform was focussed upon subverting the pernicious power and actions of LEAs, unions and some teachers, rather than rolling back the state. The most radical policies were put on the backburner.

The creation of City Technology Colleges, pushed by Sir Cyril Taylor, was one reform that Thatcher got right. Sir Cyril convinced Labour to keep the faith and in 2000 Lord Adonis was the driving force behind the creation of the Academies system, much to the consternation of trade unions. Although still not unburdened of all regulations that previous governments had pilled upon the delivery of education, the fact that Academies could innovate on the core national curriculum, circumvent national teacher pay deals and cut out the worst of the bureaucracy was another step in the right direction. One wonders why Blair went to the trouble of getting rid of grant-maintained schools.

No matter who comes to power, I am in no doubt that there will have to be further moves towards greater freedom in education. Michael Gove plans go furthest and he should be credited for the robust defence of his policies. The promised introduction of the Swedish model of education is a ray of hope in an otherwise unclear future. And it is not just the Swedish reforms that are to be commended. The Times Educational Supplement has found that Academy numbers would likely triple under a Conservative government.

Labour have run out of ideas, while the Liberal Democrats promise to turn the clock back and localise power in education, with the LEAs once more taking centre stage. The Conservative Party, in this area at least, look set to finish the job that Thatcher started and give power back to parents, as near-consumers of education.

LEAs or parents? Carter or Gove?

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Cllr Paul Carter, the leader of Kent County Council, says he thinks the Conservatives' education policies could be a disaster and could starve state education services of cash. Paul Carter is, of course, a Conservative.

A kick in the teeth for Michael Gove, the Conservatives' education spokesman and architect of the new policy? No. Just an indications of what reformers are up against when they try to devolve power away from the political system and down to local people themselves.

Mrs Thatcher faced exactly the same criticism when she proposed the 'internal market' in education – state schools managing themselves, without the local authorities bossing them around, and being paid according to the number of pupils they attract. Indeed, the criticism came from exactly the same source – Paul Carter's predecessor as leader of Kent County Council, Sir Alexander ('Sandy') Bruce-Lockhart.

Am I the only person who is sickened by this? Michael Gove's Swedish-style schools policy would of course sideline local education authorities just as Mrs Thatcher's (reversed in the early years of the Blair administration) would have done. It would give all parents, rich and poor, access to the schools that they thought were best for their own children – rather than forcing them to accept whatever local councillors deem good for them. You can see why local councillors don't like that: it undermines their control and their empires, and exposes the fact that they aren't actually providing the kind of schools that people want. Reactionaries, the Left would call them. David Cameron should tell them to shut up.

The education debate

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One of the most telling statistics I have ever seen in the debate on education can be seen here at the Cato Institute’s website. School spending in America since the 1970s has increased dramatically – vastly outstripping inflation, whilst standards have flat-lined. Totally, completely, utterly flat-lined.

There is simply no correlation between school spending from government (and in the USA, that is Federal AND State/Local) and student achievement. Where there is a correlation, it is between government spending and the number of people employed in the education sector, which really shouldn’t surprise anyone. It might, or might not be a coincidence that all parties are promising more school spending at the same time that teachers are threatening not to mark any SATS tests, and their unions are gearing up for strikes. After all, as Sir Humphrey Appleby once explained, The Department of Education exists to lobby on behalf of the teachers unions, not to educate the children of Britain.

What we need is not more money – that will achieve nothing. What we really need, as I have also argued with regards to social security and healthcare, is for the money to be channelled through consumers – the people who actually use the services. Education spending per pupil in the UK for 2008/9 was £5,140. If parents controlled this money, and schools had to compete for their share, outcomes could be improved dramatically. Current spending equates to an average spend per class in secondary schools of over £110,000 p.a. Can anyone honestly look me in the eye and tell me the private sector couldn’t run a better school for that money?

The welfare state, in its top-down form in which money and control are centralised in Whitehall, is failing miserably. If we, as small ‘l’ liberals and libertarians accept the political necessity of redistributive taxation (even if only as part of a transition toward a minarchist state) we should at least argue that the redistribution should be kept as simple and direct as possible. Giving money directly to parents and deregulating the education sector would be a good start, but merely throwing money at the problems that currently exist wont make them go away.

Educational reform

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“The solution to some of the gravest problems we face as a society lies on reforming the way we educate our children”, wrote Alan Greenspan in his 2006 memoirs. For a change, I wholeheartedly agree with the man. Educational reform in the UK, along with restoring fiscal credibility, is of preeminent importance to the cause of securing long-term growth prospects for the UK.

As we slowly climb out of recession (although apparently at a faster rate than the rest of the EU), standards of education and widespread availability of high quality schools, colleges and universities will form a key part in creating what needs to be an increasingly flexible labour market.

The current centralised state sector, supposed to guarantee the availability of quality schools across the country, has produced some of the highest inequalities of educational opportunities in the developed world. A recent OECD report, ‘Economic Policy Reforms: Going for Growth’, states that educational achievement in science, mathematics and reading is extremely uneven. The standard deviation of student performance, a measure of how far individual cases deviate from the average attainment, is higher in the UK than both the OECD and EU-wide averages.

The current state system is becoming increasingly clunky, bureaucratic and cumbersome, an abject failure for thousands of youths across the country leaving high school with nothing to show for it. The talent and experience of teachers is systematically precluded by top-down proclamations of what counts as learning. The best teachers I had at school where those who ignored OFSTED’s view of ‘quality teaching’ in favour of a more flexible and spontaneous approach, responsive to the classes needs. The in-classroom know-how developed by teachers must be unleashed. Competition is key to ironing out the regional differences in educational standards.

I’ll reserve my judgement as to which party can best deliver such reform, bearing in mind the likely resistance to be faced from teaching unions, but it must be a top priority for whoever takes power. Educational standards are a key input in determining economic productivity, labour flexibility, innovation, growth, crime rates and many other indicators of a countries’ progress; little else is of comparable importance.

The winds of change

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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the University of Houston is outsourcing some of its grading to Bangalore. Virtual-TA, provided by EduMetry Inc, is delivered entirely online. Graders hold masters degrees and as Lori Whisenant, a teacher of business law and ethics, states, “This is what they do for a living. We're working with professionals.” The obvious question that arises from this development is: given that Bangalore provides most of the students feedback, do the consumers of education even need a university? I would argue no.

Some teachers and institutions will feel that their position is being usurped if this process leads to its obvious conclusion. Their only hope will be to turn to the government. I don’t fancy their chances, as some established and powerful players already have some skin in this new game. After all, Oxford University already offers online and distance courses. At present, the branding of virtual universities falls short of those ‘real’ universities, but as with all technological revolutions, the shakeup in the system will lead to some new and very creative business models, amongst the inevitable destruction.