Over a third of UK universities are in financial trouble, according to Universities UK, the group that represents many of them and is currently lobbying the government for a lifeline. Ministers say they are ‘looking at all options’, but vice chancellors will find the task of convincing the cash-strapped Treasury a difficult task: new data reveals how disproportionately funded our education system is in favour of higher education.
The latest OECD Education at a Glance data for 2024 makes painful reading for university chiefs. Comparing the education spending of 37 OECD countries, the UK has the third highest total per student spending on university and college education. According to their calculations, our national spend at around $27,000 (£20,600) – excluding research and development expenditure – which is almost twice the OECD average of just over $14,000 (£10,700). We are top of the class for the number of students receiving public financial support: over 90 per cent of UK students receive support in the form of government-guaranteed public loans. A cause for celebration, you’d think?
Over a third of children are starting school developmentally behind for their age
Before we rush to congratulate ourselves, it’s worth asking if such a disproportionately huge focus on spending compared to the rest of the OECD is justified by the evidence. Do we know something that the others don’t? Or might our attachment to the higher stages of education be a hangover belief that getting a degree is the most important educational attainment for an individual, as well as society and the British economy?
This is a startling thought, but we appear to be at an educational crossroads. The government must decide whether, looking at those numbers, they should tell struggling universities to wash their own faces – and even allow them to go under. The implications of this would be brutal university closures, but how can it be right that vice chancellors being paid several times the Prime Minister’s salary are begging for further taxpayer relief when the critical, foundational early years of learning are so proportionately underfunded?
There is a case for shifting the focus of funding from the end of the education pipeline to the beginning. Despite our lavish spending on universities, Britain’s expenditure on the critical, early years of learning languishes fourth from bottom according to the OECD charts – somewhere above Turkey but far behind the likes of Lithuania and Luxembourg.
Recent science tells us that we are learners from birth and that the fastest period of our brain development is the first two years of life. Our earliest experiences in these months are the foundation for everything that follows: a child’s development score at 22 months is an accurate predictor of education attainment at 26 years of age and our adult physical and mental health has deep roots back into these earliest years.
This science isn’t reflected in the national discourse or policy priorities and the data shows that it’s certainly not reflected in the tertiary-addicted outpourings of successive governments.
The Department for Education would say that public spending on early years is growing, but we still treat early education more as a means to facilitate mums getting back to work and paying their taxes, rather than an education-based policy. Bewilderingly, the new government is following the free childcare hours expansion set by the Tories, with funding focusing on working families earning certain thresholds of income, with families eligible if parents earn between £9,518 and £100,000 per year.
This locks out the most disadvantaged children – the ones who need state support the most – from the expanded entitlement because of their parents’ work status and earnings. 70 per cent of those who are eligible for support are from families with the top half of earners. The Sutton Trust has shown that only 20 per cent of those earning under £20,000 will qualify for the new funding, compared to 80 per cent of those earning over £45,000.
We must do something different because the current balance of funding isn’t working. Teachers tell us that over a third of children are starting school developmentally behind for their age and the proportion of children who start school not toilet trained, able to dress or feed themselves independently is over 25 per cent and growing.
Our failure to focus on the early years means we’re overlooking the fact that the Department for Education’s own statistics tell us that 40 per cent of the overall development gap between disadvantaged 16 year olds and their peers emerges by the age of 5. By 16 years old, disadvantaged children are 18 months behind their peers. If they start behind, they stay behind. The fastest, easiest and cheapest time to close the education disadvantage gap in children is in the preschool years: for every £1 we invest then, the exchequer saves £13 in later interventions.
I’m not naïve; there’s no magic money tree that can suddenly shower the early years sector with the funding necessary to level the playing field of opportunity for children starting school. But looking at the staggeringly disproportionate spending by the UK government on tertiary education when compared to most of the world’s developed countries, now is the moment to rethink how we might get the biggest bang for our hard-earned education buck.
Comments