The Times reported last week how the Education Select Committee criticised Gordon Brown for pledging to raise the level of spending on state school students to match that of students in private schools.
The story makes the very valid point that whimsical spending that fails to realise results will make the public unwilling to fund future public services.
My biggest problem with Gordon’s plan is that it’s founded on a an extremely simplistic notion of cause and effect: private schools spend more on pupils and private school pupils get good grades, ergo spending on pupils leads to good grades. The Chancellor’s attempt to create causation when there’s only correlation is dangerous, precisely because it’s a populist measure and most people will confuse the two. And of course, it must be obvious right, that more spending the same as private schools will make state school pupils more like the ones in private schools?
And isn’t it the biggest irony that all it would take is a few minutes of education, namely a flick through a good elementary statistics text book for voters to see through this?
Oh, and a final thing. Private school pupils get good results because they select for the brightest pupils. Most investment in private schools is probably gold plating that adds little extra value as far as exam results go. Would the Chancellor be able to explan, for example, what would be the point of matching this spending?
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