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What the latest data on education tells us, and what it doesn't

Janet Daley posts with a perfectly justifiable sense of outrage about the latest data on education. She says:

The Office for National Statistics points out that the amount spent on state education has risen by 43 per cent since 2000 but school “productivity” – measured by GCSE and stats results - has actually declined by 7.5 per cent.

There is what statisticians call an inverse correlation between the amount of money spent by the state on schools and their academic success.

Surely this fact should figure in any future argument about public spending. The Conservatives should stop apologising for the need to make cuts and speak the truth: more cash is not the answer to improvement in the essential services of health and education.

She is quite right to argue that this finding is central to the debate. So let's consider carefully what it does and does not mean.

First, the overall decline has been in productivity and not in standards. The figures do not show that more spending is accompanied by overall falling standards, let alone that it causes falling standards.

Second, the figures show that as we put more money in, productivity fell. This might be due, of course, to diminishing returns. In other words you wouldn't expect your tenth pound to deliver as much satisfaction as your first pound.

Third, just because standards did not rise enough as spending rose does not mean that as you cut spending standards won't fall. the dynamic going down could be completely different from that going up.

Fourth, the figures do not show that you can necessarily get better standards by not spending, merely that we failed to get sufficiently better standards when we did spend. One might need money and reform.

On the other side of the ledger are these points:

First, it was an outrage to spend all that money and have so little to show for it. While theoretically it is possible that all we are seeing is diminishing returns, I strongly suspect (although i can't go further than that) that this isn't the real explanation. i think we wasted money by spending poorly.

Second, it is clear that some areas actually are doing worse even though more money is in the system. In these areas it is clearly not just productivity that is falling.

Thirdly, measures to improve productivity should precede spending rather than the other way around.

While I think these figures show a monumental failure, it is worth understanding just what that failure has been.

The problem with Swedish-style school reform

A fascinating article in The Observer on the costs of the Swedish school plan.

Here's the nub point:

A report by the Skolverket (Swedish National Education Agency) on the first 13 years of the scheme found that nearly half of Swedish local education directors did not think the new schools had produced "more effective use of resources" and 90% identified "significant increases in costs".

Skolverket's own sampling suggested costs per pupil rose in urban areas, where free schools may be most popular in Britain, but fell in others.

This supports one of my central arguments - that reform might cost money before it saves it.

Note that none of this is an argument against school reform. After all, the quote from the Observer could just as easily read that more than half of the Swedish directors did believe the new schools had produced more effective use of resources.

It simply argues that reforming public services and controlling public spending may be related but are not the same thing.

Which reflects light the best - a hat or a CD?

Here's a Key Stage Two science exam question for you, concentrate now...

'Which reflects light better? A wooly hat or a CD?'

Michael Gove is worried... 

(Hat tip: Conservative Home)

When dumbing down is a good thing

 

Pity the poor GCSE student. Again and again, they hear that their exams are easier than they used to be. No-one seems to believe that knowing the difference between a telescope and a microscope quite measures up to the good old days of complex mental arithmetic.

But over at Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris Dillow takes issue with the idea that dumbing down exams is always bad. In fact, easier tests might actually help employers:

They’ll allow those people with good but non-tested skills to now acquire credentials as well. And as these people can now get jobs ahead of good exam-passers with poor other skills, so labour productivity might improve.

What Jade Goody tells us about our schools

Fraser Nelson put up an excellent post on Jade Goody's wedding yesterday.

Quite a lot of the commentary on the event mentioned the money being raised for Jade's children, but Fraser noted acutely what she wanted to spend the money on:

She’ll put it in a fund to educate her sons. “I know I'm ignorant, but I'm going to make sure my boys are not,” she says.

She means, of course, send them private – and the fact that no one questions her logic is a powerful comment on the country we live in.

The Finns or Dutch would find it incomprehensible that a mother’s dying wish is for her children to avoid the state education system. But there most state schools are privately-run. Parents don’t have to fork out for the best education, as it should be.

Her concern is a uniquely British one, because in no other country is the gap between the quality of state and private education so large.

It's a very good spot.

Jade's dying wish is a terrible indictment of schooling policy in Britain.

The flaws in the Childhood Inquiry

Following my article this morning about the flaws in the Good Childhood Inquiry report, I was pleased to hear from one of Britain's most distinguished psychologists, Professor Joan Freeman.

Here is what she had to say:

As a professor of psychology with expertise in children I was asked onto Channel 4 news to comment on the report which you write about today in The Times.  I agree with you absolutely.  I was given a brief pre-interview and expressed exactly what you said.  I was dropped.

When the broadcast appeared, every single person promoted the idea that it was all very terrible for British children.  Talk about biased reporting.  Or maybe it was simply ignorance.

School Gate has all the answers

Did you submit a question to Schools Minister Jim Knight?

If so, you might just find an answer over at School Gate. An argument about summer birthdays, soft A-Levels and the merits of the grammer school system is just a click away.

Put your questions to the Schools Minister

Pink Floyd aside, we do need some education. But how to go about getting it raises ever more questions for parents.

Luckily, our very own School Gate blog is here to get some answers from Schools Minister Jim Knight.

Submit your queries here.

Michael Gove and Ronald McDonald

When Michael Gove worked with me here at The Times we used to have a disagreement about McDonald's.

He not only disliked the fast food giant - he thought it a destructive force. I differed from him on both counts.

There is an echo of this dispute in his speech yesterday.

Michael argues that:

The determination to push ahead with the closure of small GP practices and their replacement by polyclinics is another move in the direction of narrow cost efficiency over enriching personal intimacy.

Then later comes out in favour of community schools.

Now it is easy to understand why he would oppose polyclinics and mega schools arising from state planning. But his dislike goes beyond this - he regards them as inhuman and destructive of relationships.

Yet he then goes on, correctly and excitingly, to argue for school choice.

What, though, if when people choose their schools and GPs they choose mega schools and polyclinics? Or at least enough of them do to make the human sized alternatives unviable. After all, Michael, people choose Tesco and, ahem, McDonald's even if you find their choice baffling.

So if the market is introduced, as I believe it should be, into the provision of public services, is there really any content to the idea of institutions that sustain relationships, save for the (questionable but important) assertion that these are the institutions that would emerge through free choice?

Just wondering.

SATs at School Gate

School's out for summer. At least for the Westminster crew. But Ed Balls faced a tough last day of term as he spoke to the House of Commons this morning about the SATs fiasco.

Find out more at the excellent School Gate