Today’s UCAS figures show record levels of people applying to university, which should not come as too much of a surprise. The current generation of 18-year-olds have been encouraged to apply to university for the whole of their school careers and in tough economic times, people look to boost their skills if they find themselves out of work.

The figures should be an opportunity for us to praise a job well done by the government in promoting the value of education, and a degree, and recognising the power of education to transform lives and act as a catalyst for social mobility.

Unfortunately, today’s figures just confirm that thousands of students will have their dreams of a university education shattered by government funding cuts. The combination of record numbers wanting to go to university and such savage cuts in funding is producing a crisis.

With courses already closing and teaching staff losing their jobs, Peter Mandelson risks becoming known as the Doctor Beeching of higher education. Those students who are fortunate enough to secure a place will face increased class sizes, less contact with lecturers and will still leave university with record levels of debt.

Not funding higher education places makes even less sense when one considers the alternative of pumping extra cash into the benefits system to prop up record levels of youth unemployment. Other leading economies are investing money in universities in order to help economic growth and widen participation, yet our government is intent on doing the opposite.

This approach is an insult and a snub to the thousands of students the government has been encouraging to reach for university for the entirety of their educational career.

As I have said before on Left Foot Forward, the government has been so close to getting it right when it comes to opening up university education, but it has always failed to be bold enough. It has got more people to work hard towards a university place, but has now restricted places so many talented and qualified people will miss out.

The bottom line is that you cannot make savage funding cuts without serious consequences, despite Lord Mandelson’s insulting efforts to sell the cuts as an opportunity. The government is abandoning a generation who, instead of benefiting from education, will find themselves on the dole queue alongside sacked teaching staff.

The government can come out with as many statements as it likes about the importance of education, how it will be protected from the recession and its own commitments to social mobility, but the hard facts and punitive cuts tell a much harsher and sadly more accurate story.

Our guest writer is Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union

Theresa Villiers and George Osborne sent out mixed messages over the Conservative party’s transport policies this week, Ms Villiers warning she could offer “no guarantees” over major rail projects the day after the Shadow Chancellor committed the Tories to both Crossrail and High Speed 2.

In an interview with Rail News, Ms Villiers, the Shadow Transport Secretary, refused to guarantee electrification of the Great Western Main Line and the rolling out of new Thameslink stock and the Intercity Express programme – in spite of saying she supports electrification “in principle” and “understood” the benefits new trains would bring.

Her remarks were in sharp contrast to those of Mr Osborne 24 hours previously when unveiling the Tories’ “New Economic Model”, in which he pledged funding for Crossrail and the new north-south high speed line to Scotland. The Association for Consultancy and Engineering, however, asked for “further details about how this ambitious programme would be financed”.

Ms Villiers’s comments also appear to contradict the Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke, who this week said that the Tories “will seek to ensure we don’t jeopardise key infrastructure projects”, telling the South Devon Herald Express:

“Historically, the easiest thing to cut has always been capital programmes. People get less annoyed if you cancel the future than if you cancel the past.

“But we are all too well aware it is dangerous to cancel real investment, including investment in infrastructure, at times like this.

“Having the proper infrastructure is going be essential to the South West taking part in the recovery.”

The latest passenger satisfaction figures, meanwhile, have revealed a record 83 per cent are satisfied with the overall service they receive, with the proportion satisfied with punctuality and reliability up two points to 83 per cent.

Less than half of those surveyed, however, believed they received value for money – only 45 per cent.

The operators with the highest satisfaction ratings were Wrexham & Shropshire (98%), Grand Central (95%) and Heathrow Express (93%); those with the lowest ratings were First Capital Connect (75%), National Express East Anglia (79%) and Southeastern (80%).

David Cameron yesterday claimed that families owning properties worth more than £325,000 would be helped by his party’s inheritance tax policy. But leading economic theory shows that people are unlikely to pass on the full value of their assets today to their children.

On the Politics Show yesterday, David Cameron claimed that there were millions of people “at risk” from inheritance tax:

SOPEL: And inheritance tax even though only a couple of thousand estates, 2,000 people would be affected by it, that commitment, policy commitment remains?

CAMERON: We made a commitment for the Parliament. We said how we’re going to pay for it. And lets be clear, the current threshold for inheritance tax is £325,000. There are millions of people in our country who live in homes worth more than that who are at risk from inheritance tax. We think those people – people on middle incomes, people who’ve work hard in their lives – they should not [interruption]. It will be done in a Parliament as we’ve said.

Watch it:

But the life-cycle hypothesis or “intertemporal consumption” economic model predicts that individuals save while they work in order to finance consumption after they retire. This includes realising the value of their property before they die. In January, Fabian Society Research Director Tim Horton wrote to the Telegraph following similar remarks by the Tories:

“The Conservatives’ claim that four million face inheritance tax (report, December 29) is wrong.

“For most households, the value of wealth owned at death will be less than the value they currently hold. Many people use some of their wealth in older age – whether to pay for care or to do things in retirement. So, you cannot use the current distribution of wealth across all households to calculate who will face an inheritance tax liability in future.

“The reality is that only the richest two per cent will pay inheritance tax this year. Even in the boom years, only around five per cent of estates paid the tax.”

The Tory policy would deliver £540,000 savings to the country’s largest estates. The Mirror has shown that “David Cameron and Tory pals will make £7 million from inheritance tax changes if they get elected.” Eighteen members of the shadow cabinet are millionaires.

Conservative leader David Cameron gave a clear indication of his education policies this week with his pronouncement on faith schools.

He said:

“I think faith schools are an important part of our system, I support them and I would like if anything to see them grow.

“I think faith organisations bring often a sort of culture and ethos to a school that can help it improve and I’m a strong supporter personally [David Cameron’s daughter attends a Church of England primary school] and politically.”

His comments were interpreted by the Daily Mail as an intent to bring about “the biggest expansion of faith schools since the 19th century”.

In this, he falls broadly into line with the policies of the Labour government since 1997, whose successive Education Ministers have consistently supported faith schools.

In 1998, David Blunkett famously said that he would like to “bottle the ‘ethos’ of faith schools” and apply it to every school in the country.

Although he has been accused recently of “undermining” faith schools, as recently as 2007, Schools Secretary Ed Balls was saying, with specific reference to faith schools:

“One thing we’ve learnt as a government is that having a distinct ethos, strong leadership, a commitment to promoting opportunity for all, those are the kind of schools where parents want to send their children.”

There are many criticisms of faith schools put forward, some easily countered. To the commonly asked question: “do they push a religious agenda in the classroom?” – the answer is straightforward. All faith schools in England – Jewish, Catholic, Sikh, Muslim or CofE – are required to teach the National Curriculum, thus evolution, not creationism.

At the same time, there remain many legitimate debates: Should all taxpayers have to fund schools which are not open to all? Are admissions and employment policies fair? Is the selection process open to exploitation by “pushy parents” willing to feign religious devotion to get their child a place? Does a policy of schools for Muslims, schools for Sikhs, etc, have a socially divisive effect?

The really pertinent question is this, however: Why are successive politicians ready to overlook these concerns? And the simple answer is that faith schools, by and large, work. They are popular with parents, achieve better than average grades and are perceived to be strong on discipline and pastoral care.

Faith schools, accused of higher levels of ‘pupil sorting’ across schools, are now monitoring their own success at social cohesion. A recent report by Professor David Jesson of York University, funded by the Church of England, found that faith schools were better than non-faith schools at building community relations.

Based on ratings from Oftsed inspectors, Prof. Jesson found that of the 74 secondary faith schools surveyed, 24 (32 per cent) were rated “outstanding” at community relations. Of the 337 non-faith secondaries analysed, 55 (16 per cent) were given the same grade.

The atheist philosopher, Prof. Harry Brighouse, has argued that religious education benefits children from secular homes, promoting understanding and intellectual autonomy. Further arguments can be made that enabling Muslim schools, for example, legitimises that religion in society – in much the way that Catholics schools have.

What attracts even secular parents to faith school is the idea of education underpinned by an established set of beliefs, values and a strong narrative. It was, after all, originally the Church of England which established a system of mass education in this country in the 19th century with the aim to educate the poor.

In the 21st century, there will be a real diversity of different sorts of faith provision – the challenge for any government is to enable all children to have access to such an education, and not to allow the provision of faith schools to become another sop to the pushy middle classes.

The papers today cover a new report by the Higher Education Funding Council for England on university attendance. Also released today is a less widely covered report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies which shows that any increase in fees would reduce university participation.

The BBC reports that “More youngsters from poor homes go to university” while the Telegraph shows that, “Women are almost 25 per cent more likely to get into university as the gender gap in education widens, according to figures.”

But this good news is offset by a warning from the IFS which outlines that:

“The [2003/04] reforms had no overall impact on HE participation at age 18 or 19 in England. But grants, fees and loans do impact on participation and in different ways:

“A £1000 increase in fees has a negative impact on participation of around 4.4 percentage points (compared to an age 18/19 participation rate of around 1 in 5). This outweighs the positive impact of a £1000 increase in loans (3.2 percentage points) or grants (2.1 percentage points). Thus, increasing fees without increasing loans and/or grants by the same value or more, will result in a negative impact on participation.”

The Times this morning reported that “Universities are pushing for tuition fee rise” but Stefan Baskerville, president of the Oxford University Student Union told Left Foot Forward:

“Despite the cavalier attitude of many universities to raising tuition fees, the IFS report shows that an increase in fees negatively impacts on participation in higher education, even if loans are increased accordingly. In order to offset the negative effects of increased fees, the government would need to raise both loans and grants by more than fees increase. This is clearly unrealistic in the current fiscal climate, and that’s why the Government should consider alternatives to fee hikes such as a graduate tax, so that higher education is funded fairly and sustainably.”

Yesterday, the University and College Union reacted angrily to new figures on the award of maintenance grants. General Secretary Sally Hunt, said:

“Today’s figures mean more misery for the thousands of students hit by punitive changes to the grant system and for their parents who are struggling to get by and support their offspring in these tough economic times.

“We were particularly alarmed by the sharp drop in the number of students awarded a full grant. We do not believe the drop is consistent with the number of students applying to university from poorer backgrounds. The SLC and the government must urgently investigate if the students who most need financial support are the ones missing out.”

Late last year, Highland Council cancelled an annual school trip to an outdoor activity centre for 70 children at Crown Primary School in Inverness, to avoid facing legal action under the Disability Discrimination Act. The council has been criticised for misinterpreting the law.

Donna Williamson, the mother of a disabled child who attends the school and was to go on the trip, said her daughter is physically unable to take part in the activities planned. She told BBC Scotland:

“She cannot hold a bow and arrow for example, or go kayaking, because she has no upper body strength.

“My daughter would have been excluded in that she would have had to stay in the centre while all the kids went off to do the activities.

“When she wasn’t in the centre she would have been asked to film them kayaking and doing the things she would love to do but she cannot do and I thought that was psychologically a pretty cruel thing to ask a child to do.”

The Disability Discrimination Act states that, when carrying out their functions, schools have a duty to:

• promote equality of opportunity between disabled people and other people;

• encourage participation by disabled people in public life;

• take steps to meet disabled people’s needs, even if this requires more favourable treatment.

Last week, the council’s decision to cancel the trip was criticised by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), who accused the council of “a lack of planning and foresight.” The Commission also said that the cancellation of the trip was “the easiest answer.” The EHRC added that the cancellation was not unlawful, but said that it hoped practice in other schools could be better demonstrated than in this case.

Highland Council said there was no alternative to cancelling the trip after taking legal advice. In a statement, Highland Council’s education chief, Hugh Fraser, admitted that mistakes had been made by his department in this case, but provided assurance that this will not set a precedent for other cases. He said the school and council officers were now working to ensure that high quality experiences meeting the needs of all pupils would be offered.

Disability Rights campaigners believe that this case has taken the Disability Discrimination Act too far. Left Foot Forward has spoken about this case to two disabled young people, both of whom have successfully completed mainstream educations.

Stacey, who has had Cerebral Palsy from birth and has worked as a Further Education tutor, says:

“This is just silly. I accepted from an early age that some school activities I would not be able to take part in. It’s not discrimination. It’s life and practicalities.

“Of course every effort should be made so that disabled people can take part in activities, but ya know what, sometimes it is just not possible.

“I feel sorry for the other kids who will miss out. It’s a lose-lose situation.”

Another young person, who wishes to remain anonymous, remembers being taken on a similar trip by her mainstream primary school. She says:

“My mum had to come along, which was more than a little embarrassing for me. The trip was not without its problems, but we were both glad that I went.”

The Tory marriage tax plans were in further confusion last night as it emerged that just 1 in 20 couples would benefit.

The Mirror reports this morning that:

“David Cameron’s marriage tax-break bribe would help only one in 20 couples who tie the knot, Labour has found.

“And he is again in retreat over the plan after a spending black hole was uncovered. Only marrieds with children under the age of three are now expected to benefit.

“But Treasury figures – showing only 6% of those who get wed would be better off - found that would [sic] still cost other taxpayers [£600 million] to be raised through “green” taxes.

New costings released last night and seen by Left Foot Forward outlined:

“Treasury analysis of this proposal shows it would benefit 6 per cent of married couples, 2 per cent of all family units (single people or couples and  their dependents) and 3 per cent of adults.

“Treasury costing of this proposal shows it costs £800m (not the £600m Iain Duncan Smith claims).”

In yesterday’s Observer, former shadow Home Secretary David Davis mounted a defence of the policy but conceded that:

“Take the category of single mothers alone. The common assumption is that they are mostly young teenagers who are careless or who even deliberately get pregnant as a step to a council flat and a benefit cheque …

“But that is not the typical single mother by a long chalk. Single mothers come in a wide variety of categories. There are married mothers who are separated or divorced from their husbands. There are single mothers who decide to have a baby, but who are capable of providing for that child, both financially and emotionally. Then there are widows.”

Sky News quotes Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liam Byrne:

“Marriage plays a vital role in our society.

“But David Cameron’s latest marriage tax plan does nothing for 19 out of 20 married couples – except put a tax rise on their cars and holidays.

“David Cameron broke his promise to help all married couples when he was forced to admit his plans didn’t add up.

“Now, he’s got himself into the absurd position of having a married couples policy that leaves the majority of married couples worse off.”

The news today that the last decade ended with record numbers of students applying to, and being accepted at, university, should represent a resounding success for the government’s policy to increase the number of people going through university. That policy has had its predictable detractors – right wing commentators and those who honestly believe that a better-educated country means standards must be slipping – however, the government has largely stuck to its guns.

Hidden away in today’s figures, though, is the fact that, despite those record numbers of students applying to, and studying at, university, there was actually a decrease last year in the percentage of people applying to university who then were accepted onto a course.

This can be traced back to last year when the expected number of additional student places was scaled back. This was a particularly devastating blow as not only did we have a generation who had been actively encouraged to apply to university keen to go, but also a spike in the number of 18-year-olds.

On top of that, the government then warned institutions that pushed ahead and did accept additional students that they would be fined.

Therefore we have the quite incredible situation where the government today will no doubt trumpet the success of its policy to expand university participation and then, in a month or so, fine the institutions who were brave enough to carry out its policy.

All this comes on the back of devastating cuts planned for a higher education system the government mistakenly believes can deliver more for less. Lord Mandelson speaks warmly about education being a key driver of social mobility, but has announced extra cuts of £135m to universities, on top of the £600m announced in the pre-budget report.

Students, often with the help of their parents, are stumping up record levels of cash to pay their way through university. Yet, as well as massive debts, they will face larger class sizes and substantial cuts to courses. Just last week university chiefs said that up to 30 universities could be forced to close because of financial problems and we have warned that 14,000 jobs are at risk.

The government should be proud of its laudable aim to try and get more people through our universities. However, it must understand that rhetoric alone is not enough. Now, more than ever, the government needs to be brave enough to back its policy and provide the necessary resources the university sector, and record numbers of students, so desperately need.

Our guest writer is Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union

The Nuffield Trust’s report into the state of the NHS since devolution has painted a picture of a health service that has fragmented as governments in London, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast take differing policy decisions on the provision of health services, starkly highlighted yesterday by the decision by NICE not to approve for use in England and Wales a drug for the treatment arthritis that is available in Scotland, as reported by Left Foot Forward.

The report, the first of its kind, also comes in the wake of the debate on how best to tackle alcohol abuse and binge drinking, which Left Foot Forward examined on Monday. Nuffield undertook an assessment of NHS performance across the UK at fixed points in 1996/7, 2002/3 and 2006/7, using indicators such as expenditure, staffing levels, activity, staff productivity and waiting times.

Key findings include:

• Despite Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland having the highest per capita spending on health, it is England that “is making better use of the resources it has in terms of delivering higher levels of activity, crude productivity of its staff and lower waiting times”, despite having spent less and having fewer doctors, nurses and managers per head of population;

• Although it has the highest rates of spending, highest numbers of hospital doctors, GPs and nurses per capita, Scotland – which has the poorest health – had the lowest rates of staff productivity and lowest rates of inpatient admissions per head of population in 2006/7;

• In 2006, Wales had the lowest rates of day cases but the highest rates of outpatient admissions, whilst Northern Ireland had the lowest rates of outpatient attendances but the highest rates of inpatient admissions and day cases; and

• Wales and Northern Ireland have performed poorly on waiting times compared to England. It was not possible to compare Scotland as waiting times North of the border are measured in a different way.

Commenting on the report, the Nuffield Trust’s Director, Dr Jenifer Dixon, said:

“Some of the differences and trends may be because of the historical differences in funding levels, which are not directly related to policies implemented after devolution. But some will reflect the different policies pursued by each of the four nations since 1999, in particular the greater pressure put on NHS bodies in England to improve performance in a few key areas such as waiting and efficiency, via targets, strong performance management, public reporting of performance by regulators, and financial incentives.

“We believe the research raises important questions about the efficiency of care across the devolved nations. There is a lack of comparable data that allow differences in performance across the UK to be analysed in depth in future. Without such comparable data, UK taxpayers and HM Treasury cannot know whether they are securing value for money for their health services.”

However, Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of the British Medical Association, cast doubt over the ability to measure performance in this way. Dr Meldrum said:

“Measuring the performance of any health system, and achieving meaningful comparisons with others, is always difficult.

“While ‘productivity’ is important, it is by no means the only measure of how well the NHS is performing.”

Unsurprisingly, reaction to the report has been mixed.

Scotland

The NHS in Scotland was reported to have has the lowest productivity of the UK, with the lowest admission rates, despite Scotland having the poorest health. Responding to the report, a spokesperson for the Scottish Government said:

“This report is based on data that’s at least three years old and is out of date. Since then there have been significant improvements in NHS Scotland’s performance.”

Defending NHS Scotland’s performance, SNP Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said:

“Some of the challenges NHS Scotland faces are unique certainly in a UK context such as some of the more deep-seated issues of deprivation and ill health and of course our dispersed geography.

“Now these are not excuses for bad performance, but they do mean that it is not always possible to make crude comparisons between one part of the UK and another.”

Mindful that the period covered by the report was one that saw Labour leading a coalition government at Holyrood, Shadow Health Secretary Jackie Baillie said:

“Scotland has the unenviable record of having some of the highest levels of poor health across the UK. It is therefore not surprising that we spend more to address the consequences of that poor health.”

Wales

In Wales, criticism was levied against the methodology used by the Nuffield Trust. Mike Ponton, Director of the NHS Confederation in Wales, said:

“The report measures performance in terms of productivity, but this method misses out much of what the NHS does and fails to measure what really matters – the quality and safety of care. High levels of activity, such as in-patient admissions or outpatient attendances, are not necessarily a good thing.

“What really matters is keeping people healthy and out of hospital – what we want to see is reduced hospital attendances and admissions. More sophisticated methods are needed to measure the quality of care, whether the patient is made to feel better, and whether they are satisfied with their treatment – not how many times they have turned up at the hospital doors.”

Defending the Assembly Government’s record on health, a spokesperson said:

“Despite being based on data from 2006, when we were at the start of a major drive to reduce waiting times, it is encouraging to note that the report acknowledges that the NHS in Wales is leading the way and making significant steps to improve patient services and health care – most notably with the introduction of free prescriptions and the refocus of organisations to meet the needs of the population.

“However, despite this overall acknowledgement of our progress, much of the report is dated, and therefore does not accurately reflect the NHS in Wales today. Five years ago, we had in excess of 100,000 patients in Wales waiting over six months for treatment. Of these, almost 8,000 patients were waiting over 18 months for definitive treatment.

“The latest figures show that during November, more than nine out of 10 patients were treated within 26 weeks from initial referral to start of definitive treatment, with many patients treated far quicker than that, and 98% of patients waiting were waiting less than 26 weeks.”

Conservative Health Spokesman Andrew R T Davies was not quite so positive. He said:

“Patients and staff have long had concerns that too much money is wasted on bureaucracy and not enough is reaching the frontline, where it could make a significant difference to the experiences of patients.”

Northern Ireland

On Northern Ireland, one of the report’s authors, Professor Nick Mayes of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said:

“Northern Ireland for a long time has had higher spending, more resources, more beds, more doctors, more nurses, more GPS and tends to have longer waiting times and lower levels of productivity as measured by the relationship between the number of staff and what we measure in terms of the services delivered.”

Defending its record, a statement from the Department of Health in Belfast stated that the review included Personal Social Services, and that:

“Therefore, to compare like with like, it is necessary to reduce the figure of 9.4 (managers) per 1,000 of to 6.6 per 1,000 of the population. With the implementation of the Review of Public Administration, this figure will fall to below 6 per 1,000 of the population. This is less than the Scottish figure and in line with that reported by Wales.”

In November, Left Foot Forward reported the remarks by DUP Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson, that there was scope for greater productivity within the health service in Northern Ireland.

Whilst the Nuffield Trust’s report paints a picture of a fragmented NHS across the UK, its findings could perhaps be just the tip of an ice burg. As BBC Wales Health Correspondent Hywel Griffith concludes:

“Perhaps the most salient part of the report deals with the future rather than the past. Its authors warn that the years of feast in spending on health across the UK could be followed by relative famine – making it harder than ever for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland to catch up.”

A new drug that has shown promise in treating the chronic condition of rheumatoid arthritis has been approved for use in Scotland but not in England and Wales. The news has caused controversy and has raised fears of the possible beginning of ‘medical apartheid’ in the UK.

The drug in question is called RoActemra or Tocilizumab and, according to Prof. John Isaacs of Newcastle University, data from the company shows it can stop joint damage in 83 per cent of cases over 2 years when used with another rheumatoid drug called methotrexate – this compares with 66 per cent in patients using methotrexate and a placebo.

Rheumatoid arthritis affects over half-a-million people and is a condition characterised by joints being attacked. It leaves sufferers with poor mobility, decreased functioning and in many cases chronic pain.

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the body charged with issuing guidelines to clinicians and approving new drug use, has raised concerns over the cost-effectiveness of the new drug.

It will cost £9,000 per patient per year and NICE has deemed this too expensive when evaluating the data for potential benefits. It has to be said that NICE has challenged the makers ROCHE to provide more information regarding costs before they make a definite decision on the issue.

However, the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) announced yesterday that they have approved the drug for use in moderate to severe cases for patients north of the border, This has inevitably caused concern in many circles and has raised the possibility of health inequality based on postcode.

Arthritis Care Chief Executive and Vice President of the European League against Rheumatism (EULAR), Neil Betteridge, said:

“We’re delighted that the SMC has taken the decision to make tocilizumab available on the NHS in Scotland. There are a number of treatments for RA [rheumatoid arthritis] currently available but they simply don’t work for everyone.

“There are people who are most severely affected by this debilitating condition who have been failed by existing treatments. It’s for those people living in intense pain, unable to work and struggling even to walk, that tocilizumab could provide real hope.

“Having access to the widest range of treatment options gives someone with RA the best chance of keeping this painful and potentially disabling disease under control. We hope that a decision to make tocilizumab available south of the border to people with RA who really need it, will follow soon.”

The disparity between Scotland and the rest of the UK will inevitably cause anger among patients and clinicians. The decision further adds pressure on NICE to approve the drug south of the border. Furthermore it raises questions on how scarce resources should be allocated and how cost effectiveness can be measured in such a debilitating condition.

The Welsh Education Minister Leighton Andrews has announced a full scale review of how education funding in Wales is allocated to schools, colleges and universities.

The move will seek to implement a manifesto pledge (page 12) made by First Minister, Carwyn Jones, during his campaign to become Welsh Leader, which made clear his desire to see:

“A re-focusing of educational investment to ensure a greater proportion reaches the frontline – schools, colleges and universities.”

The review, described by the Minister as an opportunity to cut bureaucracy, will be undertaken by external consultants in two stages: the first, in February will focus on assessing the costs of administering education; the second stage, due to be held in March, will make recommendations for savings, and where and how money can be freed up to ensure it reaches the frontline.

Commenting on the announcement, Mr Andrews said:

“I want to see more funding going to schools, colleges and universities. To achieve this we must review the real cost of administering education across Wales. It is imperative that we reduce the bureaucracy and streamline the education system to make it lean and effective to benefit our learners.

“I believe we can do things more smartly and simply in Wales. We need to make sure we make the best use of the resources available to us. Major performance improvement and better efficiency from our education providers is the key to us getting more funding to the front line.”

The announcement was welcomed by the National Association of Headteachers for Wales, who hoped it would identify the costs of school administration. The Association’s Director in Wales, Anna Brychan, commented:

“There is a variety of practice in local authorities. We don’t really know quite why or for what reason or whether that’s justified or whether we can re-focus it on the front line and use it more effectively there. Our feeling is that we could.”

During First Ministers Questions last week, under questioning from Welsh Liberal Democrat leader Kirsty Williams, Mr Jones confirmed that the Assembly government would seek to raise education spending by 1 per cent above the block grant from 2011 onwards.

The announcement has come following news on the BBC’s Politics Show in Wales which found that more than a quarter of the 172 schools that responded to a survey timetabled lessons for teaching assistants to either supervise or teach directly. One school in Swansea was reported to have used assistants for 150 hours of classes a week.

Unison have raised concerns that some teaching assistants are being use inappropriately. Speaking for the Union, Jessica Cromie said:

“We’re concerned that teaching assistants might be put under pressure to take classes that they’re not qualified to do so.

“Teaching assistants should only do this if they’re employed at a certain level but we are aware that teaching assistants at a lower level are being asked to do this and they’re not being paid accordingly.”

A spokesperson for the Welsh Assembly Government said:

“Raising Standards and Tackling Workload: a National Agreement clearly states that support staff at any level and teachers are not interchangeable and, ultimately, it is the duty of individual head teachers, working with their governing bodies and wider school teams, to determine the best way to deploy staff in their schools.

“Each school will adopt strategies that suit its individual character and circumstances. The agreement encourages schools to deploy support staff more flexibly, but accountability for the overall learning outcome of pupils will always rest with qualified teachers.”

This morning, the Conservatives launched the second in their series of draft manifestos, this time focusing on education, ahead of Education Secretary Ed Balls’s Families Green Paper on Wednesday. The vast majority of the policy proposals contained in the draft manifesto can also be found in the Conservative’s 2007 Education Policy paper – a startling sign that nearly 3 years of deliberation has brought them no further in policy development.

One of the small number of new policy announcements is the new entry requirements for teaching. The Tories rightly say that teaching should be an “elite profession”, but their policy prescription – for teachers to have a 2:2 in order to qualify for state funding – will have little to no impact.

In 2007/08, the percentage of teachers with third class degrees in the first year of initial teacher training represented only 3.4 per cent of the total cohort, down from 4 per cent in 1998. In the same period, the number of those with first class degrees has increased to 7.8 per cent from 5.4 per cent and, for 2:1s, from 45.9 per cent to 51.4 per cent.

In short, Labour in government has succeeded in attracting a higher calibre of graduate into teacher training.

Noticeable also in Cameron’s speech was the absence of any reference to Swedish schools. Left Foot Forward highlighted some of the evidence against the Swedish Schools model in August and further evidence from the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMMS) shows that England is ranked several places higher than Sweden in Maths and Science.

What is clear from both these pieces of evidence is that while the Academy style schools in Sweden produce some gains, this is not replicated in the mainstream schools, which represent about 90 per cent of schools in Sweden), which have been left to suffer.

A number of other suggestions in the manifesto document make disturbing reading. Once again, the Conservatives stress their commitment to “stop heads being overruled by bureaucrats over exclusions”. This first appeared in “Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap”, the Conservatives’ first policy green paper on education in 2007.

The Conservatives propose abolishing the independent appeals mechanism for children who have been permanently excluded, instead making the school’s governing body the final opportunity for appeal. Abolishing the independent appeals process makes the process by which Head Teachers can expel pupils far easier and risks the loss of an important check on the processes followed by both Heads and Governors.

It leaves open no mechanism for challenging these decisions, except through the courts. An option that would not be open to the families of most children facing permanent exclusion.

In September, Left Foot Forward highlighted the Conservatives’ opposition to the Government’s new Vetting and Barring System. This morning’s announcements introduce more fears about the Conservatives’ stance on child safety as they propose to “make it easier for teachers to use reasonable force to deal with violent incidents and remove disruptive pupils from the classroom without fear of legal action and give teachers the strongest possible protection from false accusations”.

It remains unclear how they intend to achieve this without weakening the protections afforded to children to ensure they are safe in school.

The publication of GCSE results yesterday sparked our annual debate about the value of league tables. On the one hand the NUT welcomed impressive results whilst at the same time decrying the manner of their publication. On the other hand the right wing press used the tables to diminish the achievements of teachers and pupils, ignoring figures which show improvements.

Both responses miss the mark.

Wide dissemination of testing results is crucial for transparency and accountability. All the evidence shows that without pupil level data being available to teachers, head teachers and administrators, performance improvement is almost impossible.

And so if it is right that this data be available to educators, it would be difficult to argue that it shouldn’t be available to parents too, who after all have a significant impact on pupil progress. Beyond that, how the press put the data into tables is something we can’t control.

Systems that are not accountable for results can tolerate mass failure. In our case that would disproportionately affect poorer children who are more likely to be let down by schools.

What’s more, the fact that improvements reported yesterday were particularly concentrated in National Challenge Schools – where fewer than 30 per cent of pupils get 5 GCSEs including English and Maths – shows the value of publishing performance data to tackle failure.

Challenge schools were named (and ‘shamed’) in 2008. But now with a combination of external scrutiny and support, their number has been nearly halved to the lowest ever level (247).

However, there are of course legitimate criticisms of the league tables. If schools are focusing all their attention on getting kids over a somewhat arbitrary benchmark in order to look good, that would mean high-fliers and those who are really struggling might get left behind.

This concern has been partly assuaged this year with the introduction of a progress measure: this tells us how many pupils progressed at least two levels from the start of secondary school. This is welcome because it will encourage schools to be just as concerned with moving a pupil from an F to a D as an A to an A*.

And if this becomes a measure that is widely used, it will highlight the schools that are adding the most value, as opposed to those that are relying on an already highly achieving intake. It will also help teachers and schools provide a more individual offer for individual children.

Following today’s front-page article in the Guardian, which warned that universities could be “brought to their knees” by £2.5 billion of Government spending cuts, Left Foot Forward takes a detailed look at the impact of the proposed cuts, on universities, students and fees.

In the last year, the Government has proposed cuts in higher education spending to the tune of £915m: £180m in “efficiency savings” in the 2009 budget, £600m in the most recent pre-budget report, and a further £135m announced by Lord Mandelson just before Christmas.

This reduces the annual budget of the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) annual budget from £7.291bn in 2010-11 to £6.376bn in 2012-13 – a 12.5 per cent cut in funding over three years. If the Institute for Fiscal Studies is right in claiming that further higher education cuts of £1.6bn are required for the Government to achieve its target of halving the deficit by 2013, then total cuts will amount to £2.5bn. This is a massive reduction in the amount of money the UK spends in the sector.

As a whole, the UK currently spends between 1.3% and 1.4% of GDP on higher education, less than the OECD average, and well below that spent by the United States at 2.9% of GDP.

To cut funding now will worsen that position as other countries continue to invest in higher education, as Wendy Piatt and Michael Arthur, Director General and Chair of the Russell Group respectively, have today pointed out. This has implications for both the competitiveness of our higher education sector and our economy.

The impact on students will inevitably be huge. Much of the cuts are coming from teaching budgets, which disproportionately hit undergraduate and taught graduate students. Capital funding is also being cut, which means buildings and infrastructure used by students will deteriorate.

Universities are highly unlikely to be able to maintain the current student experience, let alone improve it, if the amount of money they have to spend is so significantly reduced. They just can’t absorb a 12.5% cut in government funding without it badly affecting how students are taught.

Staff-student ratios will worsen, library and teaching resources will be reduced, and there will be increased pressure on the budgets devoted to widening participation in higher education, which will impact on the social mix of the student population at our universities.

Almost as bad will be the impact the cuts will have on the debate about how we fund higher education. In the context of the Browne Review, some universities, like those in the Russell Group that have made the news today, may well use the governments’ announcements to press their case for a lift in the cap on tuition fees. Government and many universities are hoping that students will pick up the tab by paying more and more in fees – this will result in students paying more to receive less.

A lift in the cap will burden students with debt; if the government introduces real interest rates on student loans in order to facilitate greater loans for higher fees – which will be necessitated by the national fiscal position – those who borrow the most will pay the most back.

At fees of £7,000, the student who funds their degree through tuition and maintenance loans would leave university with debts of £35,000 and would need to earn £30,000 a year – more than median income – just to pay off the interest on their loans, before they even start paying back the money they borrowed (Broke and Broken, NUS Report, p.7).

That is why Oxford University Student Union and the National Union of Students, among many others including Malcolm Grant, Provost at UCL, are calling for a change in the way we fund higher education.

We think the government should abolish fees and introduce a graduate tax. Graduates should pay, according to their earnings after university, into a ring fenced national trust for higher education for a period of two decades.

Our guest writer is Stefan Baskerville, President of Oxford University Student Union

On LabourList yesterday, Left Foot Forward contributor Oli De Botton highlights the Harlem Children’s Zone. HCZ is a project in New York that has been running since 1997 and covers a 100 block area in New York City. The brainchild of Geoff Canada, the project aims to provide an environment for education from birth to adult education. Today, the project serves over 8,000 children and 6,000 adults and is built on some very simple interventionist principles.

Oli says the “jury may still be out” on HCZ and asks whether we should be pursuing similar approaches in the UK. While the jury might still be out, the preliminary studies show incredible results. Professor Roland Fryer, the 32-year old economist at the head of Harvard’s Education Innovation Laboratory (EdLabs), recently published the first assessment of HCZ’s impact on outcomes. It showed that the project had managed to close the black-white achievement gap in mathematics and reduce it by nearly half in English. He concludes that it is both the quality of the school and the investment into the community that creates the gains.

While I broadly agree with Oli’s assessment I disagree that the proposal should be divisive for Labour supporters simply because it takes private money and makes use of the US’ Charter School scheme (similar to our academies). The central argument is not one about private money or public money, it’s about levels of intervention and the role of schools. For one thing, the Charter School (Promise Academy) forms only one part of HCZ; much of the project addresses wider issues of social policy that have been identified as impacting one educational outcomes.

The principle is to solve them all through targeted interventions. The incredible gains have been brought about not just by attracting significant amounts of financial investment (though, this has undoubtedly helped), but also by convincing parents that school is the best option for their children and by providing adults with something as well, incuding programmes such as parenting classes at HCZ’s Baby College. In some of the most deprived areas of this country, there is still a battle to be fought to convince some people about the benefits of education (double digit persistent truancy rates speak volumes) and schools in the UK are yet to embrace the idea that they have something significant to offer adults and the rest of the community, in addition to educating children.

Geoff Canada’s success doesn’t rest solely on private money, it rests on his ability to see education and schools not only as a place children go during the day to learn, but as a vibrant centre of a community, with responsibilities towards all its members. This is a Labour and progressive vision and one that we should all endorse.

Following David Cameron’s u-turn yesterday on marriage taxes, reported by Left Foot Forward, holes have begun to emerge in the Conservative party’s draft NHS manifesto, published this week.

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley had pledged to create an extra 45,000 single rooms by the end of the first term of a Tory Government, at a cost of £1.5 billion, brushing off criticisms it could not be funded – this has now been downgraded to an unspecified increase “as resources allow”.

The manifesto also pledges the party to merely scrapping all “politically motivated process targets”. Mr Lansley had previously vowed to scrap “all central government health targets”, another apparent watering-down of Tory policy.

On maternity care, the Royal College of Midwives dealt a blow to Mr Cameron’s pledge to make services “more personal and more local”, saying “it is hard to see how the changes the Conservatives are proposing for maternity services will happen”. The RCM added:

“The Government is committed to midwifery-led services, to women having choice, to user-involvement and to reducing unnecessary interventions and health inequalities. The NHS’s Operating Framework for 2010/11 stresses the Government’s commitment to maternity services and to linking payment for services to quality and patient satisfaction. The Government is also currently considering how to ensure that the payment system for services helps to deliver their policy for maternity services. It, therefore, is difficult to see exactly what is different in the Conservative Party’s promise for maternity services.

“The rising birth rate has undoubtedly made it difficult for the Government’s maternity policy commitments to be fully implemented but the RCM believes that change is starting to happen. The question is whether or not this can be sustained in the current economic downturn. Midwifery-led units are not closed because of Government policies. They are closed because local maternity service providers face an unprecedented challenge to maintain a full range of choice of services for women in the face of economic pressures.”

And, in an article for Progress, Paul Corrigan – former Director of NHS London and health policy adviser to Tony Blair – says:

“Their policies contain straightforward themes of public service reform, but their problem is caused by the contradiction between their policies and their politics … Andrew Lansley commits himself to stopping changes to maternity services in Bury by saying: ‘I will have the power to do that within days if we are elected.’ But this is not in fact true because he will be elected on a policy of removing that power from himself.“

The Conservative party’s increasingly discredited plans to reward marriage in the tax system now appear to discriminate against couples without children, including many civil partnerships.

The Daily Mail this morning followed up Paul Waugh’s exclusive yesterday:

“But former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said the plan would only cost £600million a year if initially limited to married couples with children under three, who are most likely to take time off to care for children.

“He said yesterday: ‘It’s absolutely affordable and it’s right. David Cameron has said so to me in private.”

The new position is a direct contradiction remarks made by the Tory leader in an interview with the Daily Mail in December:

“Mr Cameron told the Daily Mail that ‘celebrating’ and ‘encouraging’ marriage was the norm in most European countries and a Tory government would follow suit by changing the tax system.

“He dismissed speculation that the Conservatives might limit their long-standing commitment to support marriage to couples with children, or those on low incomes.

“All those who tie the knot or enter a civil partnership would qualify, he insisted.”

Restricting the marriage tax break to couples would cost considerably more than the £600 million estimated by Iain Duncan Smith. Since IDS touted the policy in 2007, tax allowances have risen. Treasury estimates of the cost of the policy put the figure at £4.9 billion, over 50 per cent higher than Duncan Smith’s own estimate of £3.2 billion. A similar uprating would place the true cost of the new policy at over £900 million.

Jonathan Finney, Head of External Affairs at Stonewall, the gay rights pressure group told Left Foot Forward:

“We’d expect Mr Cameron to honour his publicly-stated pledge to treat civil partners on an equal footing to married couples for the purpose of any future tax breaks, however they might be introduced.”

Meanwhile, a grassroots campaign on facebook has called for civil disobedience if the Tories bring in a policy. The ‘Marriage tax breaks – no thanks Dave‘ group says:

“David Cameron wants to give me and Mrs McG a tax break just because we got hitched. But he won’t give a tax break to our friends who live together, or our mates who got civil partnered…

“Join this group to tell David Cameron to stop being creepy – and if you’re married too, to be alerted when the time is right to hand over your ill-gotten tax break pounds!!”

UPDATE:

An earlier version of this story quoted only the Daily Mail who had not give due credit to Paul Waugh for his exclusive yesterday. Shame on them.