30 years of failure in education

THE Herald on Sunday headline that current university policy is “a prop for the middle classes” sums up the failure of almost 30 years of UK education policy and the level of denial of its failure.

After the war, the philosophy of all governments was the country needed every child educated to its full potential with no barriers due to circumstances.

If you were good enough, you got to study the much smaller range of real subjects leading to real jobs and careers.

Then the Major government realised the expansion in courses and “universities” could not be funded without charging, and student loans were introduced.

The Blair government hugely expanded the problem.

Tertiary education is now a ponzi scheme relying on foreign students, invention of trendy, useless degree courses, teetering on an almost bankrupt pension system, reduced pass rates in order to retain students and their funding, and denies entry to both poor and middle class candidates.

But it can’t train a basic, indigenous, core force of doctors, nurses, teachers, scientists and engineers.

Fixing the problem would create huge unemployment, of teaching and admin staff, local businesses and youngsters whose courses keep them off the dole.

I don’t know the answer but it seems we are in for a few more years of politician and academic virtue signalling and denial, and brutal, unpublicised restructuring of jobs, pay and pensions in an attempt to let the balloon down gradually.

Allan Sutherland Willow Row, Stonehaven follow the Anglo-American road back into the situation where university is reserved for the rich. Mary McCabe Circus Drive, Glasgow