Published: 24 March 2006
Education…money and sport
Professor Trevor Kerry speculates that, as the dust settles on the Budget, we are left to reflect on whether this is really a Blair-boosting education-education-education thing, or not.
We are told that schools will benefit by an extra £2.4bn.
In addition, a lot of the money being targeted at young people in this Budget is not going to schools but to sports education - £200 million.
That certainly isn’t the same thing. It is debatable about whether it is a good thing, or more accurately, how good a thing it is.
Why sport? Well, of course, the simplistic answer, and the one we are meant to take away, is that it is part of the master-plan relating to fitness, health, and keeping young people productively occupied (and out of trouble).
I am sure that it could have all those outcomes.
But one would have to be naïve to believe that these are the real motivations.
The true intention is actually vote-catching. It is about trying to look good before, and at, the 2012 Olympics, so that the swell of national pride will backlash into New Labour support. The money is aimed at a very narrow band of people.
It’s actually a pretty cynical ploy, of limited value. Limited because the kids who mount this particular wheel of fortune will be small in number, for the most part not those who would have been layabouts and yobos, and who will gain no learning benefits beyond sport from the investment.
I’m sure these young people deserve support – I am not questioning that. But most of those involved will get nowhere near the Olympics, let alone a medal.
And if you doubt the grass-roots lack of interest of the British public in athletic prowess, just look at the column inches that have NOT been devoted to the Commonwealth Games now in progress.
Analyse the popular press for any mention at all of women’s sport. Find one, you might win a medal!
Locally, the Budget almost coincided with the story of the nine-year-old girl (the gender is significant) who has been barred from playing in her local football league. How does this approach square with the aspiration?
So how about the extra investment in schools? Surely no right-minded human being can gripe about that?
Well, it has come at a cost – a cost to the Health Service.
It is also less clear than the Budget announcement implies what will actually be spent and how – in the ‘morning after’ interview Gordon Brown himself has called his statement ‘an aspiration’. Not a fact, then?
Aspirationally, education spending will rise from £5.6bn to £8bn (don’t cheer yet)… over five years. And doubtless Gordon the Prudent will count each incremental rise in each Budget over that time: the master of double-counting that he is.
Apart from free A level FE for all (but then, who stopped it being free anyway?) it is unclear how this money will be divided.
For many primary schools and rural schools, there will be a tense wait to discover whether they get a fair slice of the cake: usually they don’t. These things are hedged around too often by ‘weightings’ & ‘priorities’ and other devices for favouring some at the expense of others.
Brown is already indicating that some of this money will be ring-fenced into specific activities or areas such as increasing science teaching. Nothing wrong with support for those areas. But this is not support for all in equal terms.
On our local news today yet another East Midlands school has been gutted by arson. That’s another few million off the projected rise before we even start. It brings home with horrible immediacy the fact that just chucking money at a problem may not solve it.
The body language of the Commons at Budget Speech time told me a different story from this Benevolent Chancellor tale, or even the New Father Makes Prudent Provision for the Nation’s Kids scenario.
It was a story of a PM losing education votes in his own party and an aspiring PM having the fiscal power to appear to be doing more than the PM himself for the PM’s pet cause.
Don’t you just hate politicians?
Trevor Kerry is Emeritus Professor in the University of Lincoln but the views he expresses are his own.
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