Sunday, September 20

Saving money in the education system

Two political parties in the UK have pronounced on ways to save money in the education system. The Labour Party says that it can save up to £2bn by cutting thousands of senior staff and restraining pay. Here’s his proposal:

Mr Balls spoke of comprehensives merging to form federations, so a head teacher and a team of deputies would work across the different schools.

He estimated this option could save the department about £500m a year.

Another £250m could be saved by losing about 3,000 senior school jobs, mainly through "natural wastage", he said.

It was also likely more than 300 jobs in Whitehall which involve advising schools about the curriculum could go, he said.

Quite interesting and something that could actually work out. A federation of schools with good IT technology to work across the schools can work out. And yes, losing senior school jobs without replacement is a relatively good idea to save money and finally yes, definitely cut the damn bureaucrats.

The LibDems now are thinking about changing their promise to drop the tuition fees. I have made my views quite clear, primary and secondary education must be free, the state has a responsibility to have educated students. But tertiary education, in college and university, has to be made fee paying.

There is nothing in any form of logic which says that the taxpayers should pay for something that you personally as an individual will gain. And its a very highly regressive step. In effect, as a proportion of tax take, you are taking money from the lower strata to pay for somebody in the middle or upper strata to get educated. The middle and upper strata of the society can very well pay for their education, so in effect, the lower and poor people in this country are getting a double whammy.

Watch the left moan, but then, the left makes fleecing the poor into a master class while dressing it up as social justice. BAH!

But where are the ideas for improving the education system from the political parties? Where is the additional investment which we will actually require to improve the mathematics, the innovation, the science and technology, the pools of intelligent students? sighs, long way to go…

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