As a student at the University of Surrey just after Labour came to power, one of the few Labour policies that I supported was the introduction of tuition fees. I sent countless letters to the student newspaper in support  and – unsurprisingly – didn’t find much room for my view among the NUS establishment. My point then was that the fee structure as originally proposed exempted many of the less well-off students from paying the fees – but that the abolition of the maintenance grant as part of the tuition fee introduction hit poorer students far harder.

But the NUS didn’t listen to me and since then things have changed hugely, with the cost of a university education now unenviably massive. I cannot think that anyone would found a nation on the principle of leaving young graduates tens of thousands of pounds in debt as a price for their education and it’s utterly bonkers that we’ve got to the stage we have.

Even in 1998, it was obvious to me that there was a pretty simple problem here. The vast majority of young people educated to A-level now wish to attend university – yet the nation simply doesn’t have the funds to allow them to do this and support the swollen university corps needed to deal with the numbers. There are, it logically follows, only two ways to deal with this – to reduce the number of students at university or to increase the amount of money in the system.

Labour’s solution, typically, was to give students money from the future and postpone the resolution of the problem until some unspecified date. Today, David Willetts revealed that even this charade had now run its course and that resolution was now needed. There is no more money left to go in.

It would be great if everybody could have a university education but I have always believed that there are far too many students taking courses that don’t improve their life chances, too many students only at university for social reasons and too many who, even though committed and willing, don’t end up giving the nation back the value of their degrees. Conversely, the amount of money going into serious research in our universities is falling year-on-year. They have become places that cater for drinking and socialising first and research and academia second.

There’s nothing wrong with drinking and socialising - but not when it’s funded by the taxpayer. And if the Lib Dems are not prepared to U-turn and countenance further rises in tuition fees, we all need to do a U-turn and consider once again what the purpose of universities and their facilities is. I believe that there are much more imaginative and worthwhile ways that those facilities can be tied into higher learning without the need of three-year courses. I also think the nation needs to work out how many university places it can afford – and what it wants to use them for – and award that number, not have a show of hands who fancies a spot at uni and then try to squeeze them all in.

Higher education in this country isn’t working, similar to many of the young graduates it produces. It’s time that we had a cultural re-assessment of the role that universities play in our society and lives because the bare fact is that the good times of universal higher education are coming to an end. In future it must be a properly integrated resource available to the most able regardless of background, not a sellable commodity for anyone able to pay (or borrow).

PS I’m not exempting myself from this – I did an undergraduate degree in Music, which was very good and enjoyable. But was it necessary and could it be justified under current economic circumstances? Doubtful.

Balls - politics comes before opportunity in education

For goodness’ sake – Ed Balls is at it again. I spent yesterday writing about Labour’s total misunderstanding over how resources fit into strategy and how all too often they have become the strategy.

Judging by today’s lead story in the Telegraph - can’t think where they got it from – he’s been chasing headlines again with the second plank of Labour’s confusing non-strategy, legislation. When there’s no strategy and resorces fail, Labour’s next instinct is to legislate. But without a strategy and resources, they usually end up legislating the unenforceable or ineffable.

A legal right to a good education is a total nonsense. It is impossible to legislate adequately for, to enforce and shows an alarming lack of faith in the comprehensive system to be necessary in the first place. On the other hand, a moral right to a good education is part of every government’s contract with its people. But to confuse the two is ludicrous and could be disastrous.

I can imagine left-wing organisations being formed to sue a Conservative government five years’ hence on the basis of this bill. A decent and effective education system available to all and free at the point of use is a vital cog in society and the supreme aspiration of any administration. But it’s impossible to eliminate altogether individual shortcomings and this silly piece of idiocy from Balls is a dangerous and malicious blight on the future education system, which may become less effective through fear of litigation.

The man is patently unfit to occupy such a great office of state and his department unfit for purpose if it believes this to be beneficial to young people. Shameful, shameful, shameful. And it still doesn’t address issues of underachievement in education.

Michael Gove understands strategy rather than splurge

…That throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it unless you have the correct strategy to resolve the core issues. For Labour, far too many times the distinction between resources and strategy has not been made and extra resources has been the strategy. In the NHS, we’ve seen so much money wasted because it hasn’t been spent to address a problem, only to grab a headline.

Now Ed Balls wants an extra £2.6bn to help keep education funding on parity and protect it from cuts. It’s a typical, cynical example of the above. Yes, I’m all for money being spent on education. I believe strongly that there is a direct link between quality of education and later quality of life – I want to see people have the opportunity to become exactly whatever they want to be because that generates a happy and cohesive society. I can’t think of anywhere better to spend £2.6bn than in education.

But there’s a couple of points here. If education is, as Tony Blair claimed, at the heart of the New Labour agenda, why on earth wasn’t this “extra” £2.6bn factored into the spending plans? It is completely irresponsible for Ed Balls to go cap in hand and try to bounce the Treasury into exceeding their budgeted spending. As a former Treasury advisor, you’d think that Balls might know that. It’s not something that appears to have escaped Alistair Darling’s notice.

And second is that there is absolutely no evidence that if Ed Balls got his way the £2.6bn would make any difference to the state of education in this country. I believe that the government’s spending in education has been wasteful and misdirected and that the experience given to young people could be improved without new money and even with less. Once again, Balls is after the headline, he’s after the political quick-fix – trying to pin the Conservatives down over matching his commitment – and it’s the mark of a government on its way out.

Maybe there are questions over whether the same money can be spent on education in the short-term future – particularly if you include all the off-balance sheet PFI spending that the government is less keen to boast about. What I do know is that the public favours spending cuts over tax rises to plug this Labour government’s disastrous financial legacy and Michael Gove’s education spending will be targetted at addressing issues, improving standards and not just at picking up coverage on the front page of the FT.

Ed Balls - a rare point

Ed Balls, the man who takes the ‘Ed’ out of ‘education’, has ever-so-accidentally let skip that he wants to slice £2bn from the education budget on the grounds that our national debt will reach a staggering £1.1tn by 2011.

Well, £2bn isn’t a great deal in the grand scheme of things but every penny helps. Why, though, has he chosen to be so very public about these cuts, which he maintains will be achieved by relatively painless “natural wastage”? Because by 2011, when the next spending review in 2010 will take effect, Balls and his chums will all be on the opposition front benches – but the treasury figures will have been predicated with a £2bn reduction in education spending for George Osborne to worry about.

So George Osborne’s first review will have education cuts built in and he will have to decide whether to keep them in and risk a high-profile run-in with the NUT, those cheeky Lib Dems and even the bare-facedly shameless PLP - or whether to put that money back in for the sake of some great PR and wield the axe elsewhere.

It’s one of many, many ticking packages that the Labour front bench is busy constructing for an incoming Conservative government. As if ruining the country wasn’t bad enough, Labour also believes it’s a good idea to sabotage the tools of the next government who have to sort out their sorry legacy.

The only hope that this country has of being able to contribute something worthwhile to the world and hold its place on the top table of nations rests with the quality of education we give people, young and old alike. There may be cuts to be made in our education system – I don’t know, I’m not an insider – but getting rid of teachers appears to me to be a “must try harder” idea.

We need more teachers – we need better teachers – but we also need an education system with different types of education to provide interest for different types of people – scientific, artistic, business-minded, academic, practical, creative and everything in between. For that, we need more money, not less. I would rather see money diverted from income-based benefits into both child and adult education to take people out of state-sponsored poverty and into self-driven opportunity.

No doubt Ed Balls’s response to my view would be “so what?”. Labour just doesn’t see education in the same way. I believe Tony Blair did – but he was never supported by his party in his aim to make education the enabling, enlightening, enriching and enduring aspect of our lives that it should be. 

DC and his front bench have largely had the benefit of great education and they should be able to appreciate the difference it can make. Let’s hope so – this is one area of Conservative policy I’m looking forward to seeing in the manifesto. But first they have to dodge the Balls.