Archive for May, 2007
The state of the private sector
Posted by David Conway in Education on 04/05/2007
We learn today that despite a 5.9% rise in school fees, the independent sector is thriving. Annual figures published by the Independent Schools Council (ISC) have garnered particular attention this year, with the chairman of the ISC, Nigel Richardson, suggesting that private schools are finding themselves especially in demand because they ‘are providing something that in less complicated times families might have been better able to provide for themselves’. What Mr Richardson refers to is the time parents spend with their children. But does the private sector’s appeal for parents not lie in something much simpler: a generally superior standard of education?
Civitas Health Unit
Posted by James Gubb in Health on 03/05/2007
Since 2000, the NHS has witnessed a huge, and unprecendented, increase in funding. Public spending on the NHS has risen from £46.0bn in 2000/1 to an estimated £84.4bn in 2006/7, representing an increase of 83.5% in cash terms and over 50% in real terms.
This has been accompanied by reforms that on the one hand point towards a more patient-centred and primary-care led ‘internal-market’ for healthcare. Primary Care Trusts and GP practices now purchase secondary care from NHS Trusts (or private providers) on behalf of patients, who can exercise some choice over where they are treated. NHS Trusts will be paid for the work they carry out; money should in theory follow the patient. But on the other hand, the government has created a whole raft of central bodies to provide ‘the impetus for reform’ and, more often than not, set targets that NHS bodies are expected to meet on anything from patient records to waiting times.
Manufacturing Concern
Posted by Nick Cowen in Civil Liberty, Crime, Health on 02/05/2007
Last week, Alcohol Concern, ‘the National Agency on Alcohol Misuse’, managed to generate a significant amount of media coverage with its recommendation to ‘make it illegal to provide alcohol to anyone under the age of 15.’ The reasoning behind this was that since unsupervised consumption of alcohol is spiralling, along with associated anti-social behaviour, among young people, the natural solution is to imprison parents who offer a thimble of wine to their child at the dinner table.
When faced with that as a consequence of their proposal on the BBC’s Today programme, Alcohol Concern’s spokesperson argued that the change in the law was still necessary in order to ‘send a message’. I am not sure what sort of message about this society would be sent out if Jewish Passover services (where every family member is encouraged to drink a traditional sweet red wine throughout the evening) were raided by the police, but I doubt the delinquents in town centres will see the relevance to them. The alternative ‘message’, that such laws won’t be enforced to the letter so best to work out one’s own interpretation of justice would be the likely unintended consequence.
Extending yet more tentacles
Posted by James Gubb in Education, European Union on 01/05/2007
I remember calling the LibDem’s office in Brussels a couple of months ago, asking for their education spokesperson in the European Parliament (or even an MEP with a particular interest in education) and being told there was no-one because ‘education is not an EU competence and is still the exclusive domain of member states’. This is true in the sense that the EU Commission has no independent power to propose law in this area; EU related policy on education is instead based on voluntary cooperation between the ministers of member states meeting in the European Council. Member states retain the right to veto any initiative passed in this forum and such initiatives are, at least technically, non-binding.
Yet there can be little doubt the EU is carving out a role for itself in education, coveted in particular by constant reference to teaching the ‘European Dimension’. These anomalies are typically tagged onto documents relating to the Lisbon Agenda (with its focus on lifelong learning and the like as part of the drive to make the EU ‘the most competitive economy in the world’) and various other EU-funded exchange and youth programmes. The EU budget for Education and Culture is now somewhat incredibly 1 221 270 895 euros. And then we have the Bologna Process, which has been discreetly usurped by the Commission, and subject to a damning report by the Commons Education Select Committee released yesterday.