Education in Great Britain

The present UK education system consists of daycare programs (for babies and toddlers); a 1-year "pre-school" (for 6 year olds), a 6 year primary school (starting at age 7 and ending at the age 12) and a 5 year secondary school (age 12-16). After secondary education in a comprehensive school, students at the age of 16 may choose to continue their secondary education in either an academic track or a vocational track, both of which usually take 3 years and give a qualification to continue to tertiary education. Britain learns progressive education-styled education. There are 3 terms per school year:

1. First term begins in the 2nd week of September and continues for 15 weeks, ending in mid-December, excluding a 1 week mid-term break in the end of October.
2. Second term begins in the 2nd week of January and continues for 11 weeks, ending at the end of March, excluding a 1 week mid-term break in the end of the February.
3. Third term begins mid-April and continues for 11 weeks until the end of June.

The summer school holiday period is 10 weeks from the end of June until the 2nd week of September.

### Schools

* The Bay School owned by Cornerstone Federation
* Ryde Academy owned by Academies Enterprise Trust
* Cowes Enterprise College owned by Cowes Pathfinder Partnership
* Bedford Academy owned by the Harpur Trust. Harpur Trust also owns Bedford School for boys, Bedford Modern School, co-educational, Bedford Girls' School (The school was founded in 2010 as the result of the merger between Dame Alice Harpur School and Bedford High School) and Pilgrims Pre-Preparatory School, co-educational.

## Manifesto

The Reform education system will fulfil the following three simple objectives: 1) Give parents authority over their children’s educational choices. 2) Break-up the de facto state education monopoly. 3) Grant increased autonomy to education providers, whilst imposing only a limited collection of mandatory ‘core’ subjects (English, Mathematics and Science) up to sixteen.

A Reform government will give students the freedom to pursue other educational avenues such as apprenticeships at 16 years old and older. We will also diminish or abolish centralised targets for schools instead allowing schools to set their own goals. Education spending, at about 4.3% of gross domestic product or £90 billion (2017-18), was the 4th largest element of public spending behind pensions, welfare and health. Clearly education is expensive. Whilst the Reform Party advocates low taxes our aim is an excellent education system. Cost-saving is not a direct aim of our policies, instead it a useful by-product.

The Reform government will scale back most regulation of childcare providers, remove arbitrary minder-child ratios and government inspections. This would increase the number of childcare providers entering the market-place and reduce childcare costs. This would help many parents, especially when we consider that childcare costs for a 2 child couple are the most expensive in the world! It would also incentivise much needed, yet maligned child-minders who have cared for many children, open alongside their own. Here are our policies

1. Abolition of compulsory education and compulsory inspection for children under 7 years old: The Finnish education system, one of the most effective in the world, produces happy children who do not begin their formal schooling before this age – and we believe this is a big reason why. Parents may choose what is best for their own children up to this age – whether that is for parents to enjoy better living through a low cost Reform world, and have a parent stay at home to care for their children, or employ a child-minder, or an alternative childcare provider (who doesn’t make arbitrary claims of ‘free’ hours).

2. A scholarship for every child: A Reform Party government will provide vouchers to all parents to cover the cost of their child’s early years and secondary education, and give them the option to top up the voucher to pay for superior providers. This will lead to a true marketplace in school education. When the market moved by parental choice holds schools to account, and parents can vote over education with their feet, higher quality education will increase naturally and lowest quality fall by the way.

3. Repeal compulsory education training for 17 and 18 year olds: We reject the concept of "educational conscription" that forces people to remain in education until 18. Students may leave school at 16 to pursue alternative training, including apprenticeships. The introduction of T Levels is a sensible strategy to introduce a post 16 qualification that relates to a specific industry (and therefore has a higher chance of gaining a viable career at the end). Anyone ‘not in education, employment or training’ will be free to work or train or, if they prefer and can afford to, support themselves.

4. Distillation of universities: Entities that cannot provide the full University range — Bachelor, Masters, Doctorate and research faculties — shall no longer be called Universities, they are ‘Colleges’. At root this measure is about restoring focus on excellence in education. Reversing the debasement of the term university will also make the term college more informative. This is not the same thing as denigrating it. We would also replace most nursing university courses with on-the-job nurse training and hands-on training. A Reform government will encourage sponsorship, bursaries, scholarships and bonds by all sectors of the economy to free the Universities, Polytechnics and Technical Colleges from state interference.\*Introduce a Cooperative Education model (https://distributistreview.com/archive/cooperative-education) and also model schools/colleges after Cristo Rey Network, Mount Carmel College of Nursing

* Make financial education a mandatory subject for all school children at GCSE level
* Replace GCSEs, A and AS Levels, BTECs and AVCEs with the 13–18 diploma in line with the Tomlinson Report
* Abolish SATS and League Tables
* Reintroduce competitive sports. Competitive sport teaches spirit, teamwork, social interaction and promoting good health.
* Introduce regular health checks in schools and a return to school nurses with health personnel trained to work alongside teachers in schools and make First Aid training part of the national curriculum.
* Ban Critical Race Theory and Gender Theory in all schools & university. Teachers who are caught teaches will be fined and should be suspended, do it again their fine doubles and suspension double. Do it a 3rd time and they will be fired and not allowed to work in teaching ever again.
* Scrap the Welsh Baccalaureate
* Humanities curriculum in schools to prioritise learning of English (Welsh in Wales, Scottish in Scotland) history, traditions, culture and values
* Expand Welsh-medium primary and secondary education so that it becomes "the norm in every part of Wales"
* Allow schools in Wales to convert to academy status and allow the creation for free schools in Wales

The Reform government will nurture a surplus of places to facilitate the power of parental choice. Poorly performing schools will either reform and improve, be absorbed by others, or simply close due to lack of parental support (if vouchers are "spent" elsewhere). Coupled with this, we will add a component essential to any successful voucher system — we will enable people to found schools wherever they wish and for existing schools to opt out of direct state control. We do not envisage a mass sell-off of state assets, but a switch to independent not-for-profit and private entities competing openly. Independent schools will be free to set up wherever they wish.

A Reform government will remove targets for grades and funding and end centrally imposed targets. The arbiters of any education system should be students, parents and employers, so that the onus is on the individual to aspire, parents to pressure, the institution to facilitate and the employer to select their preferred candidates. The state’s role will then be redundant.

Exam boards will be freed from government grade gerrymandering and schools will be free to adopt the exam boards of their choice. Ofqual could be transferred out of government and be funded by schools to administer exams. This will place schools and the exam board in a direct relationship with each other to foster expertise, undistracted by the state. Selection, setting and streaming must be the decision of the individual schools – after all, each school and its demographic – is different.

A Reform government will insist on the abolition of all unnecessary quangos in education, most notably – Ofsted, which is fit to cause distress and disillusionment to education professionals and little else. The private sector have their own inspectorate – ISI – who are nothing like Ofsted. We will see that inspections are a voluntary process for institutions (though publishing the results could be mandatory) who wish to inspire confidence in parents. Some parents pay to send their children to private schools and results are good. These schools are inspected by ISI, so all schools could be inspected by ISI instead, if they wished.

The abolition of unnecessary quangos has saved the taxpayer quite a sum of money already, but we would go further. We shall remove from Local Education Authorities their veto and control over the establishment, funding and administration of schools. This will render arbitrary and confusing government ‘funding formulae’, which the government itself cannot seem to fathom (as mentioned above under ‘early years’) redundant.

We shall encourage and promote home education and online learning platforms (after all, students are using the latter already). As people are individuals, their education should also be unique and tailored according to their wishes and needs. There shall be no stigma to ‘home education’ - children are not invisible if they are being taught at home. We advocate this method of learning as one of many educational choices, alongside the burgeoning online education market (of which there are many innovative ways for parents to spend their vouchers on education). Remove restrictions on home-schooling

### The problem with universities

Each university is, in a way, a collection of masters of knowledge who impart upon their student the intellectual trade. While the university is in fact itself a guild, the contemporary university has become an institution that has been removed from its original context and has been given a duty it cannot adequately fulfil. The modern university is no longer one guild among many as it originally was; It is no longer the guild that teaches the liberal arts and the advanced intellectual fields, leaving the trade skills and common jobs to other guilds. Rather, the modern university tries to do both. It seeks to perform the task of the original university, (that is, provided a balanced liberal arts education) and simultaneously train students for jobs and careers. The university system is failing at this because it is not built for such a task. Students learn how to be intellectuals from professional intellectuals. But students need to learn to do a particular job or learn a particular trade from those working that particular job or trained in that trade.

Some guild-like associations should be formed among firms or individuals within an industry. These can be formed for many disciplines such as accounting, finance, insurance, marketing, engineering, biotechnology, etc. These associations train their own students. Instead of firms hiring graduates with big degrees who demand high salaries because they are £10,000 in debt and who will have to train themselves more anyways, firms can higher students. Firms can train the students themselves. If need be, education can be supplemented with online courses, text books, and local community colleges. The student will provide entry-level labor to the firm and in return she/he is taught the trade of that firm. The student gets free education, no debt, no years of unnecessary classes, no temptation to fall victim to the extended adolescence and intense party culture that college effective has become. In return, the firm receives cheap or free labor, an opportunity to train a worker in a way that exactly fits the needs of the industry, and a chance to really get to know their employees personally. An association of firms within an industry will establish some level of knowledge of the trade at which they will award the student the honour of master and issue them a degree or license to practice that trade.

To some extent a system somewhat like this exists in places. An example that I particularly like is a hospital school near my home. The hospital has a college for nursing that a number of my friends attend. It is called the Mount Carmel College of Nursing (A Catholic College/hospital). They learn how to be nurses from other nurses not dissimilar to a master teaching an apprentice. Many of the students have jobs at that hospital and live nearby. They learn a trade from those practicing the trade and when they are done, they earn a degree saying that they know the trade. Another example that is quite promising is the Cristo Rey High School network (a Catholic school of course). This high school network seeks to educate low-income students by coordinating with local businesses to find internships for the students while in high school where the work offsets the cost of the private education. This is introducing real world experience all the way back into the high school level. The way of thinking that influences this school model is exactly the way of thinking that we need when addressing education. My family is an excellent example as well. My father is a home builder and runs the family home building business. My father learned to build homes from his father and worked for the business all his life. That is, my father learned to be a home builder from another home builder while building homes. When he was in his early 20’s he supplemented his hands on training with a quick associates degree in business from a local community college that he easily paid for himself without debt. Contrast this with some friends of mine in college. These friends got 4-year degrees in construction. They got little hands on experience in college, they graduated with $10,000 of debt, and were no better prepared for work than my dad was at their age.

A guild system introduced into the educational options for students would rescue the university before the bubble bursts. Before the college debt crisis becomes too great for our nation to handle. The advantages are numerable. 1st the university can return to what it was made for, liberal arts education and training of intellectuals.

2nd, the demand for college degrees would diminish which would significantly reduce tuition as students go to many other places for their education. Therefore debt levels would drop for those who are actually interested in intellectual careers, a purely well-rounded liberal arts education, or the higher fields of law, medicine, etc. Those seeking careers can bypass the crushing debt of the universities and simply train for the career that they desire to work in, and become much better at it much more quickly.

Finally, the deadly party, binge drinking, extended adolescence culture would shrink as fewer children are shipped off to college with no idea what they want in their life and given free rein to do whatever they want while trying to figure it out. Guilds are not just a nice distributism idea. Nor are they foolishly unrealistic as some claim. Guilds are actually exactly what our country needs to save our educational system and our students. To make the change we do not need to wait for government either. We need businesses and groups of businesses to be courageous enough to say that they actually do not need people with a degree. They will hire and train motivated employees who are willing to work hard in an apprentice-style agreement. Groups of professionals need to band together to say that they will train students and honor certifications by the members of the association. We need people to support schools like Cristo Rey High School and Mount Carmel College of Nursing or any other arrangement like this. We can and need to escape the bubble before it bursts.

## Nursey/pre-school

High quality daycare and nursery-kindergarten are considered critical for developing the cooperation and communication skills necessary to prepare young children for lifelong education, as well as formal learning of reading and mathematics. This preparatory period lasts until the age of 7. To foster a culture of reading, parents of newborn babies are given three books, 1 for each parent, and a baby book for the child, as part of the "maternity package".

The UK has access to daycare centres for children aged 8 months to 5 years in place, and a year of preschool at age 6. Daycare includes both full-day childcare centres and municipal playgrounds with adult supervision where parents can accompany the child. Mothers can stay at home and provide "home daycare" for the first 3 years, if she desires. In some cases this includes occasional visits from a careworker to see that the environment is appropriate.

In pre-school, young children will be given more opportunities to gain first hand experiences through play and active involvement rather than by completing exercises in books.

## Primary Education

They will be given time to develop their speaking and listening skills and to become confident in their reading and writing abilities. Mathematics will be more practical so that children can see how problems are solved and how important mathematics is in their everyday lives. There will be more emphasis on children understanding how things work and on finding different ways to solve problems. The curriculum will focus on experiential learning, active involvement and developing each child’s:

1. Skills and understanding
2. Moral Education (teaching of children in a manner that will help them develop variously as moral, civic, good-mannered, behaved, non-bullying, healthy, critical, successful, traditional, compliant/socially acceptable beings)
3. Positive attitudes to learning so that they enjoy it and want to continue
4. Self-esteem and self-confidence to experiment, investigate, learn new things and form new relationships
5. Creative, expressive and observational skills to encourage their development as individuals with different ways of responding to experiences
6. Activities in the outdoors where they have first-hand experience of solving real-life problems and learn about conservation and sustainability

There are no tests and they don’t measure them at all for the first six years of their education.

## Secondary education

Teachers, who are fully unionized, follow state curriculum guidelines but are accorded a great deal of autonomy as to methods of instruction and are even allowed to choose their own textbooks. Classes are small, rarely more than twenty pupils. Inside the school, the atmosphere is relaxed and informal, and the buildings are clean and tidy. Outdoor activities are encouraged and homework is minimal. Reading for pleasure is actively encouraged. Television stations show foreign programs in the original languages with subtitles, so that children even read while watching TV. All students in primary and second school have no formal tests and exams.

Comprehensive School starts at 10am and finish at 4pm, schools do not open before 9pm. Comprehensive school students enjoy a number of social entitlements, such as school health care and a free lunch everyday, which covers about a third of the daily nutritional need. In addition, pupils are entitled to receive free books & materials and free school trips. There are 4 classes which will last for 50 minutes with 15 minute break for each period.

## Tertiary education

Students normally enter higher education (HE) from 18 onwards. There are no tuition fees. The typical first degree offered is the Bachelor's degree/Master’s degree.

All universities provide professional degrees. They have additional requirements in addition to merely completing the studies, such as demonstrations of competence in practice. An example of such a degree is Bachelor of Medicine is allowed to conduct clinical work under the supervision of senior medical staff.

## Teacher

Both primary and secondary teachers must have a master's degree to qualify. Teaching is a respected profession and entrance to university programs is highly competitive. A prospective teacher must have very good grades and must combat fierce opposition in order to become a teacher. Only about 10% of applicants to certain programs are successful. The respect accorded to the profession and the higher salaries than the OECD average lead to higher performing and larger numbers applying for the positions, and this is reflected in the quality of teachers in the UK.

All teaching methods use progressive education, which is:

1. Emphasis on learning by doing – hands-on projects, expeditionary learning, experiential learning
2. Integrated curriculum focused on thematic units
3. Integration of entrepreneurship into education
4. Strong emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking
5. Group work and development of social skills
6. Understanding and action as the goals of learning as opposed to rote knowledge
7. Collaborative and cooperative learning projects
8. Education for social responsibility and democracy
9. Highly personalized education accounting for each individual's personal goals
10. Integration of community service and service learning projects into the daily curriculum
11. Selection of subject content by looking forward to ask what skills will be needed in future society
12. Less use on textbooks in favour of varied learning resources
13. Emphasis on lifelong learning and social skills
14. Assessment by evaluation of child’s projects and productions
15. Maths classes don’t have a theory called pure maths, there is no focus on calculations, solving algebraic equations or factoring complex equations, they are taught more practical skills and ways of thinking about and learning mathematics. The students must read the problem, assess the situation, and figure out the answer. They are treated more like adults than children for more real life experiences from which to pull to problem solve. They have been given independence at a young age and have therefore figured out how to deal with real-life issues and problems on their own. They are not spoon-fed them all of the answers. They have learned how to read through a problem, think it through logically and actually attempt to find an answer before they give up.
16. Physics is actually applied mathematics. The students can see how math is being used, applied and how it is relevant to the actual physical world in which they live.