Are We Spending Too Much On Education?

How more can be less

Education, education, education.

And sure enough, during Labour's time in office, they whacked up state education spending by an astonishing 73% in real inflation adjusted terms. By 2009-10 spending had increased to £88.3bn - around £8 grand pa for every pupil and student between 5 and 21.

But what precisely have we taxpayers had in return? Where's the pay-off?

You can forget all those fiddled tractor production stats - as everybody now understands, they're not worth the dumbed down exam papers they're written on.

Much more important is yesterday's report from the OECD - the 2009 results from their Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). That is based on a consistent and regular set of tests sat by 15 year olds across over 60 developed countries. And what it shows is us sinking further down the international league tables with each year that passes.

The Mail has a useful summary:

What should we make of that?

Some argue that it's largely a question of race - we're simply not as bright as the superbrains out East, and we just need to accept that as they build up their education systems we will sink ever further behind.

But even if true, that doesn't explain why we're so much worse than European countries like Finland and, gulp, Estonia.

Immigrants then. Some argue that Finland and others do well because they have far fewer immigrants dragging down the overall scores.

But while with 10.6% immigrant pupils we are much higher than say Finland, other countries with high immigrant percentages also do much better than us. For example, Canada and Australia both have higher percentages, yet both beat us in the league tables.

No, the real problem seems to lie with our school system rather than the pupil mix per se. Despite a huge additional injection of cash, we still aren't getting the results we need - in fact, we seem to be going backwards.

Which raises the obvious question as to whether spending all that extra money was worth it? And whether in these straitened times we ought to cut some of it back?

Because what the OECD report also highlights is that although we are now among the world's top education spenders, others achieve similar or better results while spending much less:

"Only seven OECD countries spend more per student than the United Kingdom...

[but]... moderate spending per student cannot automatically be equated with poor performance by education systems. For example, Estonia and Poland, which spend around US$ 40 000 per student, perform at the same level as Norway and the United States, which spend over US$ 100 000 per student. Similarly, New Zealand, one of the highest performing countries in reading, spends well below the average per student. While the United Kingdom spends almost US$ 85 000, Germany or Hungary achieve a similar average performance and spend around US$ 63 000 and US$ 44 000 respectively."

So if we cut spending back to say German levels, then according to Tyler's fag packet we could save an average $22k over each pupil's 10 years of school education up to age 15. Which works out at an annual saving to taxpayers of around £10bn pa. Not bad.

And it isn't just schools. When last sighted (2006) we were spending 5.9% of our GDP on education as a whole, whereas Germany was spending only 4.8%. Which is equivalent to about £15bn pa - money British taxpayers could save if we cut back to German spending levels.

And remember this - in this post-bubble world, Germany is beating the pants off us. Jeremy Warner has the picture story here including this chart that shows how much lower is their youth unemployment:

It seems German companies actually want to employ the products of German schools.

So what does Germany do right and we do wrong?

Hmm... now, let me see... what could it be... ah yes, selection. That thing nobody is allowed to mention here any more.

It is surely time to ask ourselves a serious question - can we any longer afford an education system that is run by the social engineering commissariat? Prizes for all and A*s all round was a lovely way of spending the last days of summer, but winter's here now.

In this new and tougher world nobody owes us a living. We need an education system that prioritises academic excellence for those with the ability to generate our future wealth, and a strong grasp of basic skills for those at the bottom - it is shocking that the OECD finds that after a decade or more of schooling, 20% of our 15 year olds are functionally illiterate.

Germany shows it can be done. We can get over the fact that our school pupils are not all Chinese. We can cope with the fact that over 10% of our pupils are immigrants. And we can even save £10 - £15bn pa in the process.

We just need to grasp one nettle.

And this time, we should do it properly and fairly (see this blog).

PS And while we're on the subject, Tyler keeps swallowing his false teeth listening to those future politicos who "speak for" the revolting students. You see, English literature degrees are not essential to the future of the nation. There is no God-given right for 18 year olds to spend three years getting pissed at taxpayer expense. The Browne recommendations on university funding and student loans are fair to everyone - both taxpayers and students (see this blog). And the thought of these future Jack Straws ruling over us for the next 40 years makes Tyler gag.

PPS Talking of English Lit degrees, Mr and Mrs T saw Rory Kinnear's Hamlet last night. Stunning - possibly the best live Hamlet Tyler has ever seen. Fresh interpretation, strong performances all round. Mrs T thought they'd slightly overdone the modern instances, but Tyler was... well.. stunned. Highly recommended.

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Straightening Out Our Straitened Times

Thanks to all those who spotted Tyler's deliberate (ahem) spelling errors in yesterday's post on the Royal Wedding.

The truth is that Tyler has never been much cop at spelling. His A Level history master was once driven to warn that T's poor spelling "betrayed a lack of scholarship". Even worse, Tyler has latterly slipped into the slovenly and entirely unacceptable habit of checking such matters on the internet rather than the OED.

So yesterday, before publishing the post, he actually checked "straightened times" on Google. And he was delighted to find that Google had no problem with it whatsoever. There were plenty of suggested links on that spelling, including links to articles in the Telegraph and Times. Surely they couldn't have got the spelling wrong. Could they?

And what about jewelry? Mrs T may have put her red pen through it, but Google was relaxed. In fact, the very first suggested link on jewelry is to Tiffany's. That's Tiffany's as in the guys who know all about such matters:



What's that? Tiffany's are a bunch of Yanks, and they don't know nuffink about spelling? Well yes, fair comment.

Maybe you can't depend on the internet to give you definitive information on spelling and grammar.

Which brings us to Gove's planned crack-down on pore spellurs lik Tyler:

"A-levels and GCSEs are to be toughened up with fewer but harder exams and a crackdown on poor ­grammar and spelling under sweeping reforms being unveiled next week...Candidates for all written GCSEs will be marked down for poor ­grammar, spelling and punctuation."

Now of course, we all think our dumbed down exams need toughening up. And we all know that employers say they'd much prefer to have staff who have mastered the 3Rs rather than a sheaf of irrelevant GCSEs gained by cut and pasting the internet. We all know that. But should Gove be laying down the content of exams?

The thing we've always liked about Gove's schools policy is that he wants to take the politicos out of the schooling business altogether. All they are then responsible for is funding the education vouchers. Everything else is down to the schools themselves and the power of parental choice. Excellent stuff that would soon have our schools rocketing back up the international league tables.

So how come Gove is right back where so many failed Education Secretaries have caused so much damage in the past? Why does he think he knows how to structure exams, even down to their marking systems? Why can't he leave it to the professionals, guided by his new schools market?

He was asked that very question by A Marr yesterday, and he didn't really answer it.

Come on Mr G, we understand it's tough. And we understand you are taking on the entire education establishment and the BBC.

But we're depending on you. We need you to keep the faith. We need you to redraw the boundary between government and our schools.

PS At least Gove has abolished Labour's ringfenced school sports budget. This has cost us £2.4bn and was supposed to turn out a new generation of kids who preferred sport to junk food. Yeah right. Naturally the school sports outreach industry is aghast, as is the BBC (it's been on all day). But what the Major wants to know is why can't we just go back to having competitive sport in state schools? "Why is it," he rants, "that the only international sports where we have winners are the ones played by the public schools? It's no coincidence that both our rugger and cricket teams have captains and vice captains from public schools. It's because those schools have made quite sure competitive sports have been kept alive and well - none of this namby-pamby rubbish, there, there, winning doesn't matter. Of course it matters! Compare that to those overpaid nancy boy losers in our clod-hopping football team... they all come from the Harold Bloody Wilson Community College, you know! It's a national disgrace." Etc.

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Never Mind The Quality Feel The Quantity

Don't worry comrades - we'll sort out the quality later 

Let's see if we can work out what connects the following.

1. Hampstead demands more welfare

OK, we know these people were only put on earth to wind us up, but sometimes they still manage to hit the spot.

First, His Grace the Archbishop says that making the unemployed work for their welfare benefits would be "unfair", and that such reforms could drive people "into a downward spiral of uncertainty, even despair".

No mention of the unfairness to hard-pressed taxpayers who currently have to support these people, or indeed of the unfairness to the people themselves in failing to help them back into the work habit.

And of course no alternative solutions - other than continuing to pour yet more of that evil money stuff over the problem in the vague hand-wringing hope of divine intervention.

You and I may understand that we've already tried money, and it doesn't work. But His Grace clearly hasn't spotted that his government literally doubled the amount spent on so-called "social protection" to well over £200bn pa, the major part of which goes to working age households (even in real inflation adjusted terms the spend increased by nearly 50%). And yet he doesn't think it odd that we have more working age welfare dependents today than we had back in 1997 - despite the intervening boom. To him, more welfare money is Good, so less must be Bad.

Then this morning the DT's Mary Riddell joined his attack on IDS's reforms:

"IDS believes that dysfunctional lives are the root cause of poverty, while the centre Left thinks, correctly, that the reverse is true...

The shift towards a US-style punitive system, under which the recalcitrant are left to starve, is also ill-starred... The US precedent does not augur well for compelling Britons to get the work habit by enforced manual labour, such as litter-picking and graffiti-scrubbing. But for an orange jacket, those unemployed through no fault of their own will be indistinguishable from criminals. With youth unemployment already running at 17 per cent, the Government risks creating a class of chain-gang conscripts."

Yes, poverty is the root cause of dysfunctional lives, so more welfare is the solution. QED.


2. One teacher good; one thousand teachers better

The excellent Reform have just published a report on teaching. They highlight Labour's huge increase in the number teachers and classroom assistants, such that the ratio of staff to pupils fell dramatically:

The programme was driven by Labour's belief that more teachers had to be A Good Thing.

But as Reform shows, studies of pupil performance find that it's not the number of teachers that matters but their quality. And that's a much more difficult thing to achieve than simply adding more bodies and reducing class sizes.

True, Labour poured money into teacher training and improvement programmes as well (a cool £1.5bn pa), but without any obvious results in terms of quality.


Connection

What connects both of these things is the socialist obsession with quantity ahead of quality. From Stalin's famous tractor factories, to the calibration of compassion in terms of welfare spending, the left thinks that Big is always best.

Gah!

As we've blogged many times (eg here), today's British poor are not poor in any historically meaningful sense of the word. Whereas if you need to see how welfare dependency drives dysfunction you need look no further than Dewsbury (see this blog). If there's any causal link at all, IDS is much closer to reality than dear sweet Mary.

Of course, both the Druid and Riddell are unreconstructed left-wingers of the Hampstead variety, so we shouldn't be overly alarmed. The vast bulk of the population agrees with the IDS reforms - work must be made to pay, and no able bodied person of working age should be able to live on unconditional welfare indefinitely. IDS just needs to ignore the shocked gasps from Hampstead and press on.

At the same time you can't help getting a bit angry. Comfortable middle class people like His Grace and Riddell have inflicted more damage on the poor than any number of profiteering City fatcats. They're the ones who've promoted state welfare over individual responsibility, and they're the ones who've all but destroyed the ladder of educational opportunity up which people like Tyler once scrambled.

Their obsession with quantity has left us with the lethal combination of welfare dependency right alongside dumbed down education.

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Larf?

The chippy grammar school boys are on the right... and they still are

Well you've got to laugh, haven't you.

Today Tyler had a rather long, and shamefully liquid, lunch with an old friend from the Treasury bunker. Two old Treasury hands, and two grammar school boys from the old days.

Ah yes, the old days.

The days when public school toffs were not the only game in town. The days when the richest fifth of students were not seven times more likely to be admitted to the top unis than those from deprived backgrounds. The days when kids who were eligible for free school meals (such as Tyler) had a serious chance of making it to Oxbridge and beyond. And the days when comfortable middle class parents (such as Tyler and his friend) did not feel the need to send their own kids to public schools.

Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen. Our new coalition cabinet comprises 23 members, of which no fewer than 14 went to fee-paying schools. Eton, Westminster, St Pauls, Charterhouse, Rugby, Wellington - they're all there (although interestingly, not Winchester).

Does it matter?

On one level no. As long as they can do the job, that's all we need. In fact, grammar school girl Mrs T reckons that when it comes to leading a charge into the machine guns, your average toff is a far better bet than your average prole. It's not just brains you see. It's character. Breeding. Bred to lead. And Cam is right out of the top drawer.

But jeeps, what does it say about the state of our state education system?

93% of our kids get educated in state schools, yet state school pupils comprise just 39% of the cabinet.

We know the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, but this is 2010, not 1810. As things stand, Tyler and his friend feel like some historic aberration. We benefited from a short burst of sunshine when those at the bottom of the pond had a real chance to crawl out and become butterflies. But now the dark clouds of privilege have rolled back in.

We've said it before, but we'll say it again: the single most important thing our new government must do is to push through Gove's free schools reform. We need the sunshine back again.

Let's hope it wasn't all just blather.

PS Declaration of personal involvement - Tyler knows our new Home Secretary personally. We thought Theresa did a good job at the Police Federation Conference today. The police don't like the idea of elected sheriffs, but Theresa got them to listen by putting it into the context of returning authority to the police themselves, and away from Whitehall. Most people on the right wrote Theresa off long ago. She may yet surprise them. Apart from anything else, she's one of the 9 cabinet members who were state educated, so she immediately gets six bonus points in our book.

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Does The Swedish Model Actually Work?

The independent Kunskapsskolan schools certainly look better*

As regular BOM readers will know, Tyler is a big fan of the Swedish free schools model - the one that allows new independent schools to set up in competition with local authority schools, and then lets parents choose whether to have their children educated in an authority school or have the authority pay for a place at the free school. Choice and competition to drive improvement - what could be better? Which is why Tyler is so excited about the Tories' promise to adopt roughly the same model in the UK.

So you can imagine Tyler's distress at Monday's Newsnight report which basically said the Swedish model is failing in Sweden itself, and has not delivered the improvement in standards supporters claim (you can watch the report here, along with Gove's somewhat back-footed response here).

The basic charge seemed to be that, while the new free schools are fantastically popular with parents, those parents are the very same pushy bourgeois elements that are the bane of commissariat life everywhere. And while the new schools may help their pampered undeserving offspring, everyone else gets left behind. With the result that in the international league tables of scholastic achievement, Sweden is now actually falling back.

Can that possibly be true? Tyler scrabbled around on the internet for the international league tables.

The best known of these is the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which applies a consistent set of student tests in reading, maths, and science to 15 year-old pupils across (now) 57 participating countries. And so far, there have been three PISA surveys, the first in 2000.

We blogged the latest 2006 study here, focusing on the alarming plunge in the relative performance of English schools. But how did Sweden do?

It turns out that Sweden beat England in reading and maths, but fell below in science (see league tables here). Overall, Sweden was ranked 10th in reading, 21st in maths, and 22nd in science (out of 57 countries).

So is that a decline over time? Here are Sweden's league positions from the first PISA in 2000: reading 9th, maths 15th, science 10th. Which would indeed seem to indicate a decline.

However, when you look at the two league tables more closely, you find that it's less a question of Sweden falling back, and more a question of some sparkling new entrants joining the PISA programme since 2000, and going straight into the top ten. These include countries like Hong Kong-China, Macao-China, Taiwan, and some of the new EU members from the East. It seems to be the survey itself that's changed, recognising for the first time the huge competitive challenge all the decrepit old western economies are now facing.

So what's the truth about progress in Sweden? How can we find out?

Tyler turned to the New Schools Network, a most excellent new operation with the energetic Rachel Wolf as its Director. They talk Tyler's language:

"The Network aims to improve the quality of education – particularly for the most deprived – by increasing the number of independent, innovative schools within the state sector.
 
Schools should drive social mobility. Talent and hard work, not background, should determine success. Yet successive governments – of all parties – have failed to make opportunity equal in our schools. The wealthy can buy a good education - paying for private schools or by buying a house in the right neighbourhood. Others are denied those options. The Network believes that allowing new schools – accountable to government, but not run by politicians – will raise achievement across the country. We will help groups who want to set up new schools, and work to create the conditions which allow them to succeed."

Spot on. And here's how they summarise the detailed evidence from Sweden (and see here):

• Students in Swedish free schools get much better scores than in traditional schools. The Grade Point Average (GPA) in free schools is 20 points higher than in state schools.
• Swedish free schools improve standards across the local authority. Several studies have found that an increase in the number of children attending free schools improves performance across the area. A study by Anders Bohlmark and Mikael Lindahl of Stokholm University found that an increase in the percentage of free schools in an area increased pupil performance across all schools. Most of this increase was due to competition in the school sector, forcing all schools to improve their quality. Åsa Ahlin of Uppsala University found that a ten per cent increase in the number of children attending free schools led to a five per cent increase in Mathematics performance across the area. Similarly, the National Agency for Education found that municipalities with larger proportions of pupils in independent schools were more likely to say that the presence of independent schools in their jurisdiction had contributed to school improvement in compulsory schools in their municipalities.
• Parents are happier with new independent Swedish schools. 91 per cent of parents whose children attend free schools are happy with the results compared to just 63 per cent of parents at state schools.
• Parents think independent schools are a good idea. The Swedish National Agency for Education has found that more than 90 per cent of parents think that parents and children should get to choose what school children attend. More than half of parents think it is good for schools to compete with one another.

Now it is true that a full assessment of Swedish experience is hampered by the fact that until very recently, there has been a dearth of standardised testing across all schools. But what evidence there is looks pretty compelling to Tyler.

And as NSN quite correctly point out, there is considerably more evidence on the results of very similar reforms in the US - ie their Charter Schools. And that evidence is unambiguous - choice and competition really does lift all boats, both in the new independent Charter Schools, and in the remaining state schools.

The bottom line is that Tyler is now even more convinced this is the way to go. As we've blogged many times, Gove and Cam must be prepared for huge opposition, both from the teaching unions, and it seems from the state broadcaster. But they must press on. The PISA study underlines that we face fearsome competition from the new players in the global economy, several of whom seem to do better in education than we do.

We really have no option - we need to secure the very best educational opportunities we can possibly provide for all our kids - not just the rich ones.

*Footnote - the chart is taken from this Policy Exchange paper. It shows the average grade scores in the independent Kunskapsskolan chain of schools, compared against the average scores across all the schools in the municipalities in which they operate, and also the national averages.

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Politics Of Envy - Latest

Never mind about them - it's the poor we need to sort out

For this morning's edition of BBC R4 Today, there was only one possible lead story: a new report on inequality commissioned by Commissar Harperson (but paid for by us). And to give you a flavour, here's how the BBC's print edition (aka the Grun) headlines it:

"A detailed and startling analysis of how unequal Britain has become offers a snapshot of an increasingly divided nation where the richest 10% of the population are more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10% of society...

...Much of it will make uncomfortable reading for the Labour government, although the report indicates that considerable responsibility lies with the Tories, who presided over the dramatic divisions of the 1980s and early 1990s."

Ah, yes, back to the old favourites - wealth as the embodiment of capitalist exploitation, and the Tories are evil. But at least the report has some nice charts.

Let's kick off with this one, which shows weekly net incomes (ie after the deduction of direct taxes, and the addition of cash benefits) as they are distributed across the UK's 25 million households (actually, these are "equivalised" households containing a commissariat standardised 2 adults and no children - see chart footnote - but don't let that distract you from the big picture):

As we can see, the top 1% of households (aka the 99th percentile) have a weekly net income of at least £2 grand (£104 grand pa). The top 10% (aka the 90th percentile) are on at least £806 pw (£42 grand pa). In contrast, the bottom 10% (aka the 10th percentile) are on £191 pw or less (£9,900 pa) - remembering of course, these are notional 2 adult households (the single adult equivalent would be £6,650).

Still with this? OK, the gap between the incomes of the top 10% and the bottom 10% is one of the most widely used measures of income inequality deployed by the poverty lobby: it is known as the 90:10 ratio. And from the chart we can see that it's currently standing at 4.2 to 1 - ie £806 pw is 4.2 times £191 pw.

What should we make of that? The report has no doubt:

"[This represents] high levels of inequality by comparison with those in the UK a generation ago, when, for instance, the ratio... was just over 3 to 1... most of this increase occurred during the 1980s."

The 1980s - it's That Evil Woman again, the one who destroyed the workers paradise we all enjoyed so much during the 70s.

Just in case you missed it, pre-Thatcher Britain had become the sick man of Europe. Our growth rate lagged far behind everyone else's and the economy had stagnated. And a key reason was that successive governments had taxed and regulated high earners to buggery, totally undermining enterprise and effort. We were equalised in poverty and national decline.

The report continues:

"A similar gain in the shares of those with the highest incomes occurred in other English-speaking countries in the 1980s and 1990s, but not in continental Europe. Earnings and income inequality in the UK are now high in international terms, compared with other industrialised countries."

Weeellll.... that's often said, but the facts are rather less clearcut. Here are the latest OECD stats on that 90:10 ratio:

Yup, there's the UK on 4.2 all right (in red). But it's right next to the overall OECD average, which in Tyler's book is not "high in international terms compared with other industrialised countries".

So to recap, the fact that measured income inequality has increased since the 1970s simply tells us we wanted to progress from our wrecked Austin Allegro economy. And on this widely used 90:10 measure, inequality in Britain today is bang in line with the OECD average, neither better nor worse.

So does this report actually tell us anything useful?

Yes. It reminds us that we have an appalling problem in our state education factories. As we've blogged many many times, they are failing large numbers of our children, especially those at the bottom. Here's a very striking chart from the report, showing points scored at GCSE (5 grade C's - the absolute rock bottom minimum "pass" - is equivalent to a points score of 200):

That long tail of failure is a shocking indictment of Labour's equalising education policies - especially when you factor in a suitable adjustment for their dumbed down exam system, and the fact that this chart is based on total GCSE scores (ie not restricted to those whose A-C GCSEs include Maths and English).

Whatever Hattie and the BBC may say, we simply cannot afford a return to politics-of-envy style taxes and income policies. Especially in current circumstances, they are a recipe for national penury. If we are serious about helping those at the bottom - and Tyler is - by far the most important thing we need to fix is our woeful state education system.

This is now down to Cam. As we've said many times, on Day One he must tell Gove to get on with the school reforms pdq. And when the unions threaten to strike, and when the BBC and the Grun start screaming, Cam will have to be Tough Tough Tough.

School choice and vouchers - whatever label they go by - are totally non-negotiable.

PS I've just seen Reverend Easton's sermon based on this report. Apparently, equal societies are happier societies - a fact so well known, his Reverence didn't feel the need to offer any evidence (see previous BOM posts on so-called happiness economics eg here and here). Which reminds me, I really must find out why the suicide rate in Sweden is twice what it is here. I guess it must be all that pickled fish. Or maybe they've actually all been murdered by those white supremacists who caused such grief for Wallander in the last series. And come to that, how come everyone in Wallander is so miserable all the time? I mean, it's a great TV series, and Ken is superb, but it's Sweden FFS! Equality central! You'd think they could lighten up a bit. Maybe Rev Easton should go over and give them a couple of sermons.

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Thieving Parents

The planned school gate sign

The State Commissar for School Place Enforcement has branded parents who flout his authority as "thieves" and enemies of the people. He says:

'The majority of parents are honest, if the dishonest few deprive the honest majority of their rightful places, that is a form of theft.'

He's outraged that parents are prepared to put their children's education before adherence to his rules. How dare bourgeois elements pretend to be living with relatives in order to get a place at a good school! For the sake of social order and the greater good, all citizens must accept the school places allocated to them by State Allocation Directorate!

As we know, the Directorate's preferred method of allocating places is the State Lottery (see many previous blogs, eg here). It's the only fair way to spread the misery of shockingly poor state schools, and to make sure that the few good schools don't start attracting all the best pupils.

The alternative approach of course is that old choice and competition thing. You let the customers choose, just like they do in the independent sector, and you let poor schools go to the wall. And by allowing new entrants to start new schools, you rapidly concentrate management minds in schools that start losing pupils. It works a treat, just like they've already discovered in Sweden and parts of the US.

So why can't we do that?

The official line is that poor schools would soon have loads of surplus places, which is terribly wasteful and we simply can't afford it. Far better to improve all schools by... well, by jolly well improving them... somehow.

Unfortunately, we've been hearing that refrain for the last decade or more. And it doesn't wash any more. As we've seen throughout the public services, top-down improvement programmes are great at imposing Stalinist terror on the workforce, but terrible at improving the service. The iron fist of the state planner has never been an adequate substitute for the subtle self-reinforcing power of the market (cf the collapse of communism 20 years ago today).

Actually, the Commissars themselves now realise their old line is utterly discredited, so today we've been treated to a new one. Usual suspect Labour spokesmen Matthew Taylor and John O'Farrell have both told interviewers that, although parents may think School A is better than School B, that's an illusion: in reality state schools are all bog standard more or less equally as good. Or to put it another way, parents can't be trusted to decide for themselves.

So let's remind ourselves and them of some key facts.

To start with, Labour has massively increased spending on state schools. Spending in England alone will be £46bn this year, which is £6190 per pupil. That's an extraordinary real terms increase since 1997-98 of 109%.

Yet depite all that extra cash, on the most widely used international comparison of pupil attainment (the OECD's PISA study) English pupils have plummeted down the league tables. We blogged the latest (2006) PISA report here, but just as a reminder, our children crashed in all three areas examined:

• Reading - down from 7th in 2000 to 17th in 2006
• Maths - down from 8th to 24th
• Science - down from 4th to 14th

So cost up - huge - and performance down - huge.

Our advice to thieving parents?

If you can't afford private education here in the UK, rent a flat in Helsinki and apply for a place at Helsinki Juniors. Finland spends less on education than we do, yet creams us in the PISA tables.

Alternatively, sit tight, arm yourself with a Big Stick,  and force Gove to go through with those school choice reforms he's promised.

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Triumphs Of Teaching To The Test

A distinct lack of rigour

Over the weekend you may have seen the latest report on falling exam standards:

"Researchers asked 3,000 11 to 14-year- olds in England to sit maths exams taken by pupils in 1976, and compared their scores with the earlier results. Analysis suggested there was little difference between the two generations.

But among pupils from the previous generation taking O-level maths, less than a quarter gained a C or above, compared to 55% in GCSEs last year."

Setting aside the obvious point that the exams themselves have been dumbed down, the researchers attribute it to teachers getting better at teaching to the test. Dr Jeremy Hodgen, of King's College, London says:

"There's a great deal of teaching to the test, so that in trying to increase scores, schools develop an understandable focus on the test, so there's a narrowing of the curriculum."

We've blogged this before (eg here and here). The commissariat's batteries of SATs and public exams have certainly concentrated the minds of teachers: for them and their schools, failure to hit target pass rates in such "high stakes tests" is directly career threatening.

But for the pupils of course it's not such a great idea. Apart from the fact that their exam achievements have been devalued in order to boost tractor production figures, high stakes for teachers have led to so-called "triage teaching".

Triage teaching is the set-up whereby a huge amount of teaching effort is devoted to kids at or just below the critical pass mark. They're the ones who could pass or fail, and it's their success that's vital to the school's overall score. Which means that brighter children - the ones who are going to pass anyway - get left to their own devices rather than being stretched. Worse, it means that the 20% of pupils who are struggling at the bottom - the ones who are never going to pass - are pretty well written off.

Dr Hodgen and his colleagues have identified precisely this effect:

"...more pupils performed very poorly than in 1976. They suggest this may be down to the greater prevalence in 2008 of whole-class teaching which is aimed at the middle of the ability range. 'The needs of children with the lowest - and highest - achievement levels can be ignored,' they warn."

But if teaching to the test has harmed both the top and bottom of the ability range, nobody can deny that aggregate tractor production has increased. In fact, when it comes to producing maths test scores, England now apparently leads the world.

How do we know?

Because we have an international study called Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), which tests thousands of 9 and 14 year olds worldwide in maths and science. And their most recent results (2007) show that England is now among the very top performers. As the government funded National Foundation for Educational Research trumpets:

"England performed at a very high level in the four TIMSS 2007 assessments: mathematics and science at both grade 4 and grade 8. Only Asian Pacific Rim countries outperformed England, but not in every assessment... Some of our European neighbours performed at a similar level to England in some assessments but none did so in all four assessments. The majority of countries participating in TIMSS 2007 were outperformed by England in all four assessments."

In maths, we outperformed the US, Germany, Italy, Holland, Australia, and even schools-of-the-future Sweden.

What's more, since the study began in 1995, our maths test scores have shown some of the biggest improvements of any country. Indeed, for 9 year olds we are the outright winner, with a bigger improvement than anyone else. No wonder ministers are so fond of quoting this report.

But how can it be we score so well? How can it be when we all think maths standards have gone to the dogs, when 20% of our school leavers are functionally innumerate, and when one-third of Cambridge University entrants with maths A grade turn out not to be up to the required standard for the maths degree course? Are we all wrong?

Nope. It's all down to teaching to the test. In that department, our bog standard state education factories have joined the world's best. When it comes to fulfilling the Gosplan exam output quota, standardised mass production has been a huge success.

It's just that one-size-fits-all education targeted on the middle 60%, does have a couple of teensy drawbacks. Not only does it waste the talents of those who have the intellectual potential to go much further, but it also fails those at the bottom who will have to live their lives never being able to fathom their credit card bills.

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Education Education Education

Fool's gold

Every year we blog the latest downward lurch in exam standards (eg see here and here), and every year we listen to the same tired old debates on Newsnight and the Today programme.

Are exams getting easier?

The left, government ministers, and the teaching unions say no. The facts say yes.

The best independent survey - the one conducted by Durham University’s curriculum, evaluation and management centre (see here) - says A Levels are two whole grades easier than 20 years ago. Here's their killer chart:

Have the qualifications been devalued?

The left, government ministers, and the teaching unions say no. The facts say yes.

The top unis increasingly need to find other ways of selecting among "A grade" students, and the top independent schools are abandoning the government's dumbed down GCSEs altogether (in favour of the independently set IGCSE - now used by 700 schools).

Frankly we can't be bothered to trawl though this year's statistical entrails - we've done it too often before. Let's just concentrate on what's to be done.

The single most important reform is to take our politicos out of education. Schools minister Vernon Coaker may once have been a deputy headmaster, but honestly, does this sound like a guy you'd want in charge of your child's education? Right now, state school parents have no choice.

Comrades! Excellent news! Tractor production has reached another record high!

Politicos always interfere in state education factories - they can't help themselves. They tell the teachers what to teach and how to teach it. They set exam grade production targets and demand their fulfilment - on pain of execution. They force customers to accept shoddy goods, and blight whole generations with forced collectivisations.

As we've blogged many times, it is absolutely essential that Gove delivers on his school voucher scheme. State funded pupils must be given the same freedom to choose as private pupils have always enjoyed. Schools must be free to run themselves, just like independent schools already are. Exams must be set independently, and schools must be free to offer the exams they choose (it is outrageous that state schools have been denied permission to offer the IGCSE).

Our politicos have had their chance with our £83bn pa state education sector, and have delivered a dumbed down quagmire. It is time to trust the customers and the producers to sort things out directly, between themselves.

PS As I've mentioned before, I have an unhealthy addiction to BBC R5 phone-ins. Yesterday, callers were naturally exercised about the dumbing down of GCSEs, and recounted no end of outrageous tales: one guy reckoned his niece had walked out of her English Language exam without finishing the paper, yet still ended up with an A grade. Yesterday's other hot topic of course, was the latest population stats. I intend to blog them once I've had a chance to sift through the ONS numbers for myself.

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The Major On Mobility

Sometimes the Major can be quite blunt:

"I'm sick to death of all this claptrap on the BBC about so-called social mobility.

I mean, look at you, Tyler. You're pretty well from the absolute bottom of the heap. You've never played polo, you've never been on the grouse moor, you don't hunt. What's more, you have no social polish whatsoever - in fact, when you're at home, I'll bet you still eat peas off your knife. Yet, despite all that, I'm quite prepared to treat you as an equal... well, virtually an equal, anyway. So what's the problem?"

Tyler winced. "Well, Major, the problem is that people like me are a dying breed. I may have grown up on a council estate and risen through the social ranks to my virtually equal status with you, but these days it's much more difficult. According to today's report from the Right Honourable Alan Milburn MP - who incidentally grew up on a council estate and rose through the ranks to become a cabinet minister - kids on today's council estates have absolutely no chance of moving up to become your nextdoor neighbour."

"You know why!" the Major spluttered, fortifying himself from the silver regimental hipflask that had been presented to his great grandfather after the relief of Montmorency. "Those socialists abolished the grammar schools - that's why! I mean, for the village children, those grammars were a godsend! Once they'd gone, the ladder was kicked away!"

Tyler sighed. "Yes, Major, you might well say that. But as it happens, I've read the Milburn Report, and it doesn't mention the abolition of the grammar schools once. Not once. So it can't possibly be that."

*****

Milburn's 167 page report repeats some very familiar themes. Social mobility in Britain seems to have fallen over the last few decades, and the top jobs seem increasingly to go to the children of parents who are already in the top jobs. Which is much less the case overseas.

The first thing to note is that Milburn directly contradicts the previous official line, which said that social mobility is getting better under Labour (eg see this blog). They now admit it's getting worse.

Second, as per, the evidence for any sweeping conclusion is incredibly flimsy. As we've blogged before, defining social mobility in terms of whether children move "up" from the manual occupations of their parents to the non-manual occupations of today, totally fails to recognise structural change in the economy. In the 40 years following WW2, there was a huge shift from manufacturing employment (largely manual) to service employment (much of it defined as "managerial and professional"... a plumber or a gas fitter is not professional?). So unsurprisingly, there was a one-off surge in "social mobility".

Third, people have been banging on about social immobility as long as Tyler can remember. Leafing through lefty journo Anthony Sampson's New Anatomy of Britain (1971), Tyler finds Sampson bemoaning the fact that 81% of Britain's judges went to public schools. And four decades later, Milburn makes exactly the same point... only now the percentage has fallen to 70%.

I dunno... what are we to make of it?

Is it surprising that kids who went to our customer-driven independent schools do so much better on average than kids who went through our dumbed-down, target driven, state education factories?

Is it surprising that the children of economically successful parents do so much better on average than children of less economically successful parents?

Er, no.

But there is one thing about which I am 100% certain.

Gove really, REALLY, MUST push through his plans for school vouchers and independent schools.

Even with all our fiscal problems, Gove's school reform is by far the most important legacy Cameron's government could leave to future generations.

It is something that could rewrite our history.

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Triumphs Of The Commissariat

Where Commissars fear to tread

We really shouldn't keep knocking the Commissars. After all, they're only trying to give us A Better World. A world that is ordered, and fair, and peopled with... well, better people. It's entirely our fault that we keep letting them down.

Take schools. This morning we heard about another selfish parent attempting to circumvent the Gosplan allocation protocol for state school places. In this case, she used her mother's address in an attempt to get her son into a good school, and quite rightly, she was sent to a heavy labour gulag for intensive re-education prosecuted for fraud.

How many times must we be told? Everybody must know by now there are far too few good schools to go round, and it simply isn't acceptable for non-Commissariat parents to insist on priority for their own children.

Indeed, as Commissarette Fiona Miller told us this morning on the state broadcasting network, it's also unacceptable for petit-bourgeois elements to move house simply in order to get into the right school catchment area. She herself knows of a couple who moved in just down the road from the very dacha she shares with our ex-Information Commissar, specifically to gain access to the same excellent local school the young Miller-Campbells attend. Can you imagine such disgraceful behaviour!

And then there's the latest attempt by reactionary counter-revolutionaries to undermine the achivements of our glorious People's Health Service.

According to the so-called Commons Health Select Committee, one-in-ten NHS hospital patients is harmed as a result of the treatment received:

‘Tens of thousands of patients suffer unnecessary harm each year and there is a huge cost to the NHS in consequence... Government policy has too often given the impression that there are priorities, notably hitting targets, achieving financial balance and attaining Foundation Trust status, which are more important. This has undoubtedly, in a number of well-documented cases, been a contributory factor in making services unsafe.’

This is preposterous. Don't these idiots realise what a triumph the Commissariat targets have been? And when it comes to patient safety, you've only got to glance at the official chart to see how brilliantly things are going:

As everyone can surely see, in the last five years reported safety incidents at NHS hospitals have soared! It's a triumph of targeting, and a triumph of Commissariat planning.

Now why can't we all give credit where credit is due?

*****

So just how dangerous are our NHS hospitals?

As regular readers may recall, Tyler's Mum was a nurse in a pre-NHS flagship hospital (the Royal Devon and Exeter - now sadly down the NHS plughole). And as she always used to tell us, hospitals are dangerous places. The fact that people sometimes get harmed is not hugely surprising.

What we really need to know is whether things are getting worse or better - especially given all the cash government has been pumping into patient safety - and whether NHS hospitals are better or worse than industry norms?

And on those vital questions it seems we have absolutely no idea. As the Commons Health Committee says:

"55. The evidence... both in England and internationally, indicates that the extent of medical harm is substantial, even on a conservative estimate, and that much is avoidable. International studies suggest that about 10% of all patients who are admitted to hospital suffer some form of harm.

Judging how far patient safety policy has been successful requires more reliable data regarding how much harm is done to patients. Unfortunately, neither the NPSA nor the DH was able to provide us with that. Government estimates of avoidable harm and the attendant financial costs are extrapolations from old, very limited, data; and no attempt has been made to produce reliable up-to-date figures."

So there we have it. We are spending many tens - possibly hundreds - of millions on patient safety programmes and monitoring systems: the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) alone costs us £30m pa. Yet the reams of figures they produce are virtually useless.

It's yet another example of top-down tractor production management. Yes, there are always plenty of targets and numbers, but they are so distorted (in this case by self-reporting bias), they are meaningless and often downright counter-productive.

So how could we manage hospital safety?

Answer: copy the system we have with commercial airlines.

I know nothing about the technicalities of airline safety, or how it's delivered. But I do know that some airlines have been much safer than others. And those are the ones I fly with.

Once again, we need the good old market. Where the Commissars struggle, choice and competition would soon weed out any operators perceived to be dangerous. Yes, OK, we would also need some minimum safety regulation as well. But that could be achieved for far less cost than the massive and useless NHS "safety" bureaucracy we currently have in place.

Another one for George's List.

PS Tyler's flabbers were well and truly gasted by the tale of Tereza Tosbell (pic above):

"A patient was so disgusted at the "filthy" hospital ward she was being treated on that she forced herself out of bed and cleaned it while still attached to a drip. Tereza Tosbell, 48, who works as a cleaner, became angry as she watched hygiene staff at work and claims their brief visit left the room as dirty as they found it. So she tracked down cleaning materials and attacked the sink, radiator and curtain rail she said had not been wiped by the official cleaners in Colchester General Hospital. "It is shameful that the cleaners just wiped the basin with a paper towel and totally ignored the taps which are the most important part. The radiator was filthy, there were cobwebs on the curtain rail round my bed and you could write your name in the dust on the windowsill," said Miss Tosbell."

And what did Colchester General Hospital have to say for itself?

"We have had a number of unannounced hygiene and cleanliness inspections by the Healthcare Commission and all wards inspected have been found to have a good level of cleanliness and maintained in good general repair. In the annual health check ratings for 2007-2008 we scored maximum marks for safety and cleanliness."

Maximum marks huh? Do we believe the Commissariat tractor stats or the customer? Tricky.

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