Response

According to the Institute of strategic studies, the league table for spending on defense across the world is

USA

Saudi

China

Russia

India

UK

Although some figures have France in between UK and India

If we look at the per capita spending, UK moves up to third place after Saudi and USA

Using the same idea of Education, UK weighs in just above the EU average in terms of Gross expenditure, but when we look at UK education Spending per students, the UK is ranked 57^th

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Education/Public-spending-per-student/Primary-level

This entry is to the questions asked of me following my last entry.

How should we improve Education? What do I think the model should look like?

Clearly the two sets of statistics which opened this entry provide a clue as to the direction of travel of my response.

I am also aware that I have used two very superficial and probably over simplistic data sets upon which the argument is based. You wont find an apology for that, because put quite, defence spending is high and education is not. So whether we rank 6^th or 16^th with respect to military spending, and education lies at 27^th or  57^th   It is in need of better resources.

I am not going to say that we should abandon our military, I am not going to say we should assume that at no time in the future should we assume the protection of NATO or the EU.

But really do we need to have such a defence capability.

The next point I want to make is the cost of sending a boy to Eton is £14,167 per half term, if we accept that there are 6 half terms per year and that there is a signing on fee of £3400, this means that the cost for an 11 year old boy going to Eton is going to be in the order of £85342 for the first year.  That fee does not include extras like music tuition.

https://www.etoncollege.com/currentfees.aspx

So if I was in a position to really fashion an education system fit for the 21^st my first moves would be

1. close all private schools, fee paying schools, public schools.
2. Every school in the UK would be state school and would receive capitation in the order of £85 300 index linked. That way every school in the UK would become an Eton College.

2) The existing GCSEs and IBs, A levels etc are fine for kids whose abilities and psycho social health or domestic situation lies within one standard deviation of the normal. It is the others, We need to oblige company’s, universities, sports clubs, public bodies and communities themselves to  generate individualised, valued and accredited educational programmes for our young people.

One young student who I spoke to in Victoria said “in face 2 face school, the teacher would spent 75% of every lesson, just calming the class or reasserting he was the boss man, in the 15 minutes left he had to get to know, teach, give feedback and suggestions for improvement for 28 kids, When I looed at typical class sizes in Eton, Dulwich College, Harrow, St Pauls…they were 16 to a class which dropped to below 10, One school’s web site boasted a teacher student ratio of 4:1

So in short, increase expenditure to match the money already paid to the elite

Remove the notion that high quality, elite education is the preserve of the rich, I don’t want to drag Eton down to become like Grange Hill or Waterloo Road, I want every school in the UK to receive the same as the top schools get.

But also let’s imagine someone like Paul Gascoigne attended a duel registration school, or a distance education school where his entire curriculum was tailored to being a sports star including…a curriculum that included how to deal with being rich, how to handle the tabloids, how to cope with early ending career, included coaching, finance, and instead of a GCSE in English he could do something on reading contracts, law, sports journalism, TV journalism.

I would also say for every member o the population, instead of saying you leave school at 16 or 18 or whatever, how about…education is free and optional u until you have attained the equivalent of 3 A Levels. So I could leave school at 16 to become  a ballet dancer, because I am an elite dancer, but by the time I am 22, my career never took off, is unlikely to ever take off but I left school with no qualifications because I danced my entire adolescence away. Well I should be allowed to return to education free until I am qualified to embark on a second career.