The UK has signed up to education-for-growth with particular enthusiasm. This is partly because, during the economically disastrous 1970s, education became a favourite explanation of British failure, but also because our super-centralised government can give reality, more or less instantly, to whatever ideas politicians have. So, for example, millions of pounds were spent on developing and promoting highly specific National Vocational Qualifications, tied to the precise requirements of every possible sector of the economy. About half were never taken by a single candidate; many others by only one or two.
Numerical targets for qualifications are another enthusiasm, strongly supported by business organisations but much less successful in their effects. When colleges and trainers are paid by the government for qualifications gained rather than courses followed, qualifications are what get delivered. At the peak of government enthusiasm for qualifying the whole population, the taxpayer was even paying for teenagers to obtain scuba-diving certificates in Cornwall.
None of this has shaken the British government’s faith in the importance of micro-managing education for economic purposes. The whole post-school, non-university sector “further education, adult education, apprenticeships etc” is now run by a vast non-governmental organisation, the Learning and Skills Council. It has a budget of more than £7bn and huge administrative costs: significantly, each little LSC is expected to plan and design courses in response to local employer needs. Adult students can’t, in their view, be trusted to choose what they should learn, or know what they really need.
Meanwhile, British universities have also been expanded at great speed, with exactly the same rationale. In the words of two recent education ministers, “higher education is at the heart of the productive capacity of the new economy and we need more young people to go to university because it is an economic necessity”. Universities are indeed economically vital for training and research. But not without limit, and not irrespective of quality. To lower costs, funds and teaching time per student have halved. Apparently all that matters is the number of people with diplomas; but if quality is irrelevant, just how, in ministers’ minds, are these economic miracles meant to occur?
It is always dangerous to conclude that, because some of a thing is good, more of it must be even better. People tend to think about education in absolutes – that it must, surely, be “a good thing” to have more of it. However, yet more examinations and diplomas are not self-
evidently more important than help for families with sick relatives or better policing of our streets. A quarter of our population is already enrolled in some sort of education, and there are millions who work in it. Do we obviously need 50 per cent university participation rather than salary increases to attract good teachers for 14-year-olds?
I think not: time, surely, for some clearer thinking about what education actually delivers.
Alison Wolf is a professor of education at the University of London.
Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth by Alison Wolf is published by Penguin.