Investing in our children benefits the whole nation
FOR too long, politicians seem to have been labouring under the misapprehension that voters don’t care about education. Last week’s Tiverton and Honiton by-election has shown this up for the complacent fallacy that it is.
One of the biggest issues reported on doorsteps – and a contributor to the catastrophic losses suffered by the Tories – was the crumbling state of repair of Tiverton High School, whose leaky roof was the subject of a community campaign.
Despite years of pleading, funding promised in 2009 for new buildings never materialised – a metaphor for the state of disrepair of our education system, and a cautionary tale that neglecting children will come back to bite politicians.
Tony Blair’s 2001 mantra of “education, education, education” now seems as mired in history as Cool Britannia.
Yet the economic, societal and moral argument for prioritising education has never been stronger. Better education leads to a more skilled workforce, increased productivity and business growth, and higher wages.
“Your education today is your economy tomorrow”, says Andreas Schleicher, director for education at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Investment in Early Years education has been shown to reap a return 13 times of spend. But the ripple effects of a good education extend far beyond economic growth: into health and life expectancy, fertility levels, even the quality of governance and institutions.
EDUCATION has been chronically underfunded for years, a point brought out in our book, The Children’s Inquiry, published this Thursday. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, health spending rose 42 per cent from 2010-25 while education was up less than 3 per cent over the same period. Multiple calls to put education on a long-term, sustainable plan were ignored.
Our failure to invest stores up problems down the line, leading to poorer outcomes for individuals and higher costs to the state in poorer health, increased crime and unemployment.
Layered onto this is our Covid response. School closures are thought to have led to some £40,000 in loss of lifetime earnings to individuals, equating to £350billion for the cohort.
Morally, the case to prioritise education could not be clearer. Pandemic closures caused unparalleled damage to children’s wellbeing, health and future prospects. Only a fraction of the £15billion recommended by the Education Recovery Commissioner for catch-up was ever provided and after months of non-performance and failure, the contract with tutoring firm Randstad was cancelled in spring, leaving an education gap that pupils and society will pick up the tab for down the line.
The net results are horrifying. All progress in narrowing this attainment gap has been wiped out. Some 100,000 children have fallen off the school register altogether and a jawdropping 1.7million children – one in four – are now regularly absent from school.
One in five pupils reaches the age of 19 without five GCSEs, a technical equivalent or an apprenticeship. And perhaps, most concerning, UK children rank consistently near or bottom of OECD league tables for overall life satisfaction.
If we aren’t going to invest in education now, then when? The Tories should be under no illusion. Millions of us have been left shocked by what has, at times, seemed like a chilling oversight in failing to consider children in policy making and a derogation of the state’s duty to protect the basic welfare and education of society’s young.
LONG-STANDING underinvestment in education – and the low prioritisation of children in the UK’s pandemic response – reflects a society structurally biased against the young. This inequity will come home to roost when there are insufficient skilled workers to support a growing generation of retirees.
After the lesson of Tiverton, our Government is badly in need of a positive vision and a message that can rally our country to unite, recover and rebuild after a gruelling two years.
A renewed commitment to children and education would be the best chance for a moraleboosting injection of aspiration and “levelling-up” to save this flailing leadership from selfdestruction. Whether they do it because it is right – or out of electoral self-interest – hardly matters. But it must be done, for the sake of our future.
‘We will lack skilled workers to support growing number of retirees’