Why the long face Dave?
You should be happy. Another day, another successful policy review. Although I had some reservations about the introduction of higher education fees, the legislation was successfully improved by Labour rebels, and Dave seems happy to keep it. The removal of the 50% limit will go down badly with many Tory supporters, who apparently saw that as a brilliant policy, but it's clearly a logical step. I also think the policy of introducing no new grammar schools is a welcome return to reality for the Conservative party.Incidentally former Tory advisor Bob Balchin says that the average spending per pupil in Britain is £5,500, of which only 50% reaches the school. Given this site's policy is to take the Right at their word, this means that average spending per pupil in the UK is £2,750. Compare this to the average private school expenditure of over £9,000 per pupil (less administration costs, but given the belief that removing a school from LEA control will lower admin costs they must be a lot lower), and you might think this potentially three-fold disparity in funding should be the starting point of any argument on relative standards.
posted by Matthew @ 1/09/2006 08:25:00 PM
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