The Recession, Youth and Education

Campaign for State Education (CASE) Conference

University of London Union, 21.11.09

Andy Green

The Recession and Education

‘Never let a good crisis go to Waste’ White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said after the Obama election victory.

This comment is most obviously apposite in terms of reforms the regulatory systems for banking and finance.

However, it might well also be applied to dealing with long-standing problems in our education and training system.

Youth and the Crisis

Young people will suffer disproportionately from the economic crisis.

Redundancies are often made on a last in - first out basis. Many firms achieve savings by voluntary redundancy and short-time working. This reduces available jobs for those entering the labour force.

Unemployment is highest amongst the under 25s and already heading towards the 1 million mark – prompting the Gov’t to announce emergency in the Queen’s speech last week.

Extended unemployment, as we know, can cause long term damage to young people both for their careers and in terms of psychological damage.

Future Prospects for Young People The prospects for young people leaving school today are probably worse than those for any generation since the 1930s. They face:

• Restricted opportunities for further and higher education (with large cuts pending for F and HE)

• Increasing fees and the mounting burden of student debt• Poor job prospects on entering the labour market• Little chance of buying a home• Working until they are 70 and then having worse pensions

than their parents.

A generational crisis of unprecedented proportions looms but few politicians are speaking up for young people because of the dominance of the ‘grey vote’.

The Crisis, Inequality and Education

The economic crisis has not only revealed the bankruptcy of the so-called Anglo-Saxon model of finance-led debt-based capitalism.

It is also exacerbating the damaging social outcomes of this model.

Household income inequality was still rising last year and is now higher than at any time since 1961.

Wealth inequality grows and social mobility in the UK is in decline

Failure to deal with excessive top salaries and future public expenditure cuts will mean that inequalities will continue to rise.

With rising inequality comes increasing social conflict and decline trust.

Trend in Income Inequality by Ginis, 1961 to 2007 (Source: Muriel and Sibieta, IFS, 2009)

Trust in People

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Long-Term Decline in Trust in Institutions

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Long-Term Decline in Trust in Institutions

Trends in level of social and institutional trust are of particular concern (they are good predictors of GDP growth and well-being). Trust is likely to have declined to historically low levels even before the recession. The effect of recent revelations about financial abuses and MP’s expenses will almost certainly have reduced public trust further. Recent polls:

• Guardian/ICM poll: only 14% believe the government is telling the truth about the current financial situation.

• MORI: only 25% trust business leaders to tell the truth and 13% trust politicians to tell the truth (the lowest levels since series began in 1983

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Education Inequality

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Income Inequality and Interpersonal Trust (Source World Bank and WVS)

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Educational Inequality and its social consequences

Educational inequality is one of the major causes of income inequality and declining social cohesion. England has one of the most unequal education systems in OECD.

• In 2006 PISA the UK had the third highest variation in tested scores in the OECD (and England is much worse than Scotland)

• The impact of social background on educational outcomes is higher than in all but 4 of 35 OECD countries.

• Most of the inequality of educational outcomes is explained not by the direct effects of social background but by school ‘peer effects’ – ie who you are educated with.

Educational Inequality can be Reduced

Educational inequality is partly due to social inequality generally but it also has to do with the educational system – and this aspect is amenable to policy change

The Nordic countries have quite low levels of educational inequality (with little difference between schools) and this is partly due to:

• Universal and largely free pre-school education

• All-through 5-16 Neighbourhood comprehensive schools

• The absence of ability grouping.

Average Variation in Science by Country Group in PISA 2006

124.55113.55

106.8599.8 94.8 94.575

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Enhancing Equality in England

England has an historic problem with educational inequality because of its long-standing preference for liberal notions of diversity and choice in education. Unfortunately, choice and diversity also being greater inequality.

However, with sufficient political will the problem is not insoluble.

Options for Reform

• Revise current ‘school choice’ policies ,which increasingly mean schools choosing students, by adopting common mandatory admissions criteria for all state schools which exclude selection by ability or proxies for ability.

• Devise new policies for balancing intakes in large metropolitan areas (eg lottery allocation of places within revised large catchment areas)

• Replace school sixth forms (currently the major source of inequality between schools) with dedicated 15 + upper secondary institutions like sixth form and tertiary colleges (as in most other countries)

• Transform FE colleges into US-style post-18 community colleges

• Adopt Peter Newsome’s suggestion to convert remaining grammar schools into sixth form colleges.

• Stem the middle class exit from state schools by removing subsidies to the private sector and increasing funding to state schools.