If the UK lags behind its main economic competitors in terms of productivity, then maybe we need to look towards our education system as providing the long-term solution.
In addition to publishing a report on the UK’s productivity gap, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics has also just published a report which asks the question: “Has Labour delivered on the policy proprieties of ‘education, education and education’?
One thing is for sure, we are spending more money on this area than before. In 1987/88, 4.9 per cent of our GDP was spent on education and training, but by 2005/06 it was 5.6 per cent, which is close to the OECD average. Between 1997 and 2007 the number of full time teachers increased by 9 per cent, and class sizes have fallen, with 88 per cent of classes today having less than 30 pupils, compared with 72 per cent in 1997.
Even so, there is still as stark contract with private schools, where teachers have half the number of pupils in a class.
The big question though, is whether this extra spending on education has impacted on results.
The LSE report says that attainment at school has improved in recent years. But there are concerns about the extent to which this reflects ‘teaching to the test’ and why, despite impressive improvements in primary school attainment in the late 1990s, this has subsequently stalled. There is, however, some evidence that the National Literacy and Numeracy Strategies have successfully increased standards, especially for boys.
It does seem that many of the ideas for improving education have had a debatable impact.
Of course, two of the government’s watch words for improving education have been choice and competition. The snag here is that for many, choice really is limited. As the Centre for Economic Performance said: “State schools discriminate on the basis of residence.” The report also cited evidence that competition has had little impact. It said findings suggest that simply offering parents a wider choice of schools and forcing schools to compete does not seem to be a remedy for poor standards in education; such a policy might also exacerbate inequalities.
To us though, it seems the issue is this. It takes time for changes to have impact. Too many changes, and the impact many never be felt. Maybe what education needs is consistency.
We said above, that the UK’s productivity per hour is 20 per cent lower than in France, and 18 per cent lower than in the US. In other words, if our productivity was comparable to the level in the US, the UK would be 18 per cent better off per capita.
Improved education may only be a part of the solution to our low productivity, but it’s a big part. Given the huge improvements in productivity that could be achieved, it could be argued that spending 5.6 per cent of our GDP on education is still far too low. After all, if we were to double our expenditure, and we then halved the productivity gap with the US we would be quids in.
The snag is the relationship between spending on education and GDP growth only exists in the long term. Governments are rarely, if ever, in office long enough to see the results of that spending on education filter through to the economy.
But, even so, unless we are to rely more and more on immigration, the UK needs better education. It always will. What we spend will never be enough, but it seems to us, we could justify spending a lot more than we do, even if this does cause a budget deficit for the next decade and a half, or longer.
But perhaps we need to see an end to change for change’s sake. The struggle to eke out ever-greater efficiencies, could be costing us more money, though never letting education settle down.
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