Education For All?

There is something wrong with education in this country; something seriously wrong. This week we have heard that the ship-builders in Barrow in Furness have been unable to recruit welders and similar craftsmen locally and have been employing Poles. They have even gone to the length of putting up notices in Polish for the benefit of the workers. What in the name of God is going on? This is the country that created the Industrial Revolution; that provided engineering to the world; now we cannot find welders. Don't give me any guff about our young people working in high tech jobs. We have 2¾ million people out of work and unemployment is particularly high among 16 to 25 year olds.
The Tories have proposed a cap on immigrant numbers from outside the European Union. Business and the Business Secretary claim that this will be an unsupportable burden on commercial and industrial activities. We have a union of 500 million people and we still need expertise from other places. Why? Is the whole European educational system failing?
In spite of our being told year after year after year that exam results are getting better and better, more and more we hear of companies setting up training courses for new employees to teach them the basics of English spelling and grammar and teach them rudimentary mathematics. Again, I ask, what is going on? They cannot construct a sentence or spell simple words or read easily after 12 years of education?
Now the coalition government is considering allowing universities to raise the fees they charge for tuition up to £10,000 per year. Add to this the loans to undergraduates and it is possible to imagine a new graduate leaving university with a debt of £80,000. How is he or she going to pay that back, get married, buy a house and/or bring up a family. Are they all going to go working for investment banks?
The whole system costs a fortune and seems to be an unmitigated disaster. I went to primary school in the 1940s, was taught in classes of 50, with shortages of furniture, books and equipment, yet I can hardly remember not being able to read. Sixty years ago I passed the 11+ exam and I went to a grammar school. An opportunity afforded me by the 1944 Education Act. Eight years later I went to a university and did a degree course in chemical engineering. I paid no tuition fees and I received a grant of about £250 [say £6,000 at today's prices] every year for my food and lodgings, clothing, books,etc. I graduated with no debts. My digs in Leeds cost me less than £4 per week. In the straightened times after the Great Depression and WWII, the country could afford to pay for my education and provide for my free attendance at a grammar school and a proper university. Now, a grammar school education is all but unobtainable except for the rich and the same will soon be true of universities. The Labour government, for some strange reason, decided that we should send 50% of children to universities. They didn't achieve this nor did they provide the resources necessary to allow such vast numbers to be so educated. They massaged the results by allowing second rate establishment to call themselves universities and to hand out degrees in pointless subjects. It has been mainly a waste of money. Now we have hundreds of thousands [millions even] of new graduates, ill educated, unemployable and with vast debts. Even some of these so called graduates can hardly read or write.
Education needs to be completely re-assessed via a new education act that sets out proper objectives and pathways to producing an educated nation of well qualified, employable young people. Many should be trained in apprenticeships for craft skills - once they have received a proper basic education. It seems that local authorities are most concerned in having impressive buildings - exercises in civic pride again - and armies of staff yet they are less interested in what the vast structure achieves.
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