Levelling Level | What Levelling Level will look like

When a system exists that is balanced and fair for all, many of the societal problems that exist and that nobody seems to be able to fix today, will simply vanish or quickly go away.

Poverty, debt, inflation, knife crime, antisocial behaviour, the cost of living, educational standards, drug abuse, theft, restricted social mobility, prejudices, political disenfranchisement, fake news, the lack of community, the failure of public services AND many other issues will be addressed, when enough people understand, accept and are ready embrace the inevitable change that will allow us to help others as we go through a process of helping ourselves.

Levelling Level is all about creating a system that takes care of every individual, every person in the same way no matter how many degrees of separation lie between us.

When we get it right for everyone else, it all comes full circle, and we get it right for ourselves.

No, this is not wishful thinking. It is about giving everyone at every age and from every background the reason to rediscover and give them back a sense of value and self-worth.

Celebrating the achievement of academic success and being ‘time served’

Whilst we may no longer be experiencing a time when a young person can or should be indentured in the way that an apprentice blacksmith, saddler, farrier, wheelwright or cabinet maker once would have been, the reality is that history has a lot of good things to teach us about the way that our system of education can and should now operate.

No, these trade crafts may not reflect the opportunities en masse that are available in the modern age.

Yes, the industries we have today may look and sound very different. But if we have brought the priorities of why businesses exist back to providing for life for all and away from providing profit for the few, we will soon find ourselves with genuine opportunities to create a parallel vocational apprenticeship pathway alongside the academic route from the ages of 14 to 21, that will be good for the apprentice, good for business and good for the wider community and the UK too.

A seven-year apprenticeship would allow young people of a practical orientation to literally learn their skills – with light touch support from tertiary or technical colleges, whilst their training could easily involve additional training such as driving licenses and industry standard qualifications. All the time providing a low-cost source of basic labour for industries in return.

At the age of 21, the parallel pathways would both end at the same time. And whilst degrees would have had their real value in the eyes of industry restored, there would also be an equivalent pool of candidates who were just as valuable, but qualified differently, with skills and experience that could only come through the process of being ‘time served’.

Making the most of the differences in the way that we learn

So here comes one of those highly controversial moments. Yes, I am going to say that we really need to embrace and make the very best of the differences in the way that we learn – just as we did without really thinking about it in the past.

People really are either heads or hands. I.e., people are either more academic or they are more practical in the way that they learn.

Whereas the current Education System is skewed to academic attainment and learning – even in what we are told are its vocational qualifications – we must return and redevelop a genuine twin or parallel educational pathway with an academic route and a genuinely vocational route for learning and attainment that begins at the age of 14.

Education

Hopefully, by now, you will understand that one of the underlying messages about Levelling Level is that you and I are as important as each other. It’s the way we think that gets in the way.

Earlier, within the chapters where we discussed the Left-wing approach of levelling down, we covered the problems with today’s education system and where the myth of intellectual sameism has resulted in nothing but loss, the lowering of standards and yes – the removal of opportunities for some of those that need them the most, resulting in a net downward spiral for all.

Why life isn’t working fairly for all

Life isn’t working fairly for all, because those who control money and therefore the lives of everyone are not thinking fairly. They think only of themselves.

It is important to understand that freedom as we perceive it in the world today, doesn’t actually exist.

Our so-called freedoms are all dictated by money and the systems that manage money. Those money systems are managed and controlled by people who do not have our best interests at heart.

Each and every part of our life is controlled by the actions of others, as is even the way that we think – IF we accept the validity and credibility of every information source that we choose.

This isn’t freedom.

If we do not question the information we are given and then live or go about our lives acting upon whatever we have been told, we have accepted someone else’s truth or narrative as our own.

This isn’t freedom.

Everything that we need and that is made available to us so that we can live our lives comes into our lives under someone else’s control.

This isn’t freedom.

We should not be fooled into thinking that because we are able to buy a nice car or an expensive house, we are the ones who are in control, when to do so we have had to ask someone else for a loan and they have then told us that we can afford to do so.

This isn’t freedom.

We should not fool ourselves with the idea that a qualification of any kind makes us different to anyone else. It only makes us different in someone else’s eyes.

This isn’t freedom.

In fact, if we conduct ourselves in any way that reflects the impression we will make on others or the world that lies beyond our doors, or we qualify anything we do or say by the way that others react or we believe that they will see us, we are not the ones who are in control.

This isn’t freedom.

If we are not free to be, say and do as we please without cost or impact upon others, life for us will never actually be fair.

Overview of Levelling Level

The Tory Right named their latest response to it Levelling Up. For decades, Labour and the Left have responded to it with public policy that adds up to levelling down.

But what is ‘it’? Do our politicians actually know what ‘it’ is? What is ‘it’ they don’t understand?

Today, we find ourselves in the early stages of a cost-of-living crisis and a fall in living standards that is the worst since records began. But these are only some of the issues we now face.

Social mobility, debt, housing, energy, inflation or stagflation, healthcare, climate change, education, wealth inequality, fake news, crime, wokeism and many other problems join the list that’s fast growing into this out-of-control crisis that is touching everything we know, too.

Change is happening around us in ways that make very little sense. Yet the messages we hear in the media and from our politicians suggest that everything is as fine as it can be. It is leading many of us to assume that we are alone with our views and feelings; thinking that we must be going mad.

The UK is the person with major health problems. It’s in a beauty salon, where every wannabe politician must be seen as top dog by everyone. But this political class are just the Saturday morning trainees, only able to sweep up and comb hair*. They smile sweetly and tell the Country that having a great look is all it takes to fix the problems experienced by all. Meanwhile, what the UK really needs is every form of medical surgery known, with the mental health care and physical rehabilitation necessary to make every part of our system work together, returning the UK to full fitness and providing fair and balanced lives for everyone in the shortest time possible.

With an establishment obsessed with sound bites and messages, rather than public policy that has real depth, Adam Tugwell unpicks the realities of Levelling Up, levelling down and decades of mismanagement and self-interest from a political class that simply isn’t up to the job.

Adam demonstrates that the broken tools of a flawed political age will always leave someone, somewhere behind, and shows that our politicians are repeatedly failing to create the social backstop that the UK needs to stop anyone being avoidably disadvantaged.

Levelling Level focusses on the inevitable process of change affecting everything around us that underway today. It discusses how we can harness the experiences that will accompany the challenges that we face to make life better by establishing a Basic Living Standard for all.

Levelling Level proposes that it is not money and financial wealth, but people and the way that our society treats its poorest and most vulnerable that underscores our real value, success and health as communities and as a Nation.

Levelling Level is a solution to the UKs problems that works for all.

*The qualified hairdressers are the government officers and civil servants, or people who like to ‘nudge’

Single issue Parties or Movements (Covid Related) don’t win General Elections (All-issue), especially in a climate when there are so many other issues that people face

What’s the number one issue of our time?

Covid? Education? Lockdowns? Social Care? Vaccine Passports? Black Lives Matter? The Driver Shortage? Afghanistan & The West’s Relationship with Islam? Labour failing as the Opposition? Brexit? Freedom of Speech? The ‘Great Reset’? Cross-Channel Immigration? Social Mobility? Cancel Culture? The Cost-of-Living Crisis? The Housing Crisis? Inflation? China? Knife Crime? A Conservative Government?

The chances are that for you the answer could be any one of the above, or none of them at all. And of those, the way that you see that issue could itself be different than any number of other people, who could again think differently about the same issue as everyone else.

Yet the most difficult and challenging thing to get your head around when you think about issues affecting the public in this way, is that nobody is wrong. Different people just see the same things in different ways because their experiences of them and of life up to that point have been different. And it is important to recognise and accept that in this broadest sense, no matter how many different views of the same situation exist, none of them are wrong.

With all that is going on in the world around us, it may seem like a strange time to be discussing the mechanics of how different people think. But with Government and therefore the Public Sector which it runs effectively out of control, a moment in time like this one may never have previously existed where the importance of recognising the mechanics of the differences between us has been so important for us all to absorb.

My motivation for writing this blog – like a number of them before, is the situation that we collectively face going forward, where a so-called Conservative Government has been making and implementing decision after decision both in response to Covid and also before, based not on what’s best for the Public, but based on what’s good for the politicians and what’s best for all of ‘them’.

Regrettably, we are walking through an age or chapter of our history where experience doesn’t matter, but the platform and profile you have most certainly counts. So, irrespective of how the voice or speaker got there, if that voice has something to say about the issues that we relate to in the way that we relate to them too, they become the voice of reason and the one that we choose to follow – no matter what the real nuts and bolts of these or the wider issues might well involve.

You may listen to one or more of those voices yourself. People who speak passionately and knowingly about one, or perhaps several of the different issues that I listed above. Yet the problem that we all face, often without even knowing it, is that the outcomes that we want in respect of the issues that we want addressed can only be achieved if we apply the same approach to all the different issues that are important to everyone.

People want change. Yet at the same time that they see so many people saying the same things that they think, feel and believe, nothing seems to be changing. Instead, it all just seems to be getting worse and worse.

The things that you feel are the ones that need to be changed, can be changed. But those things important to you will only be changed if you can see, feel and embrace the importance of all the other issues that everyone else is facing too.

Those lined up or lining up against the Johnson Government today appear to be great in number. But when the next General Election comes, which is planned for 2024 but is likely to be a lot sooner, there will no alternative available on the ballot papers right across the Country for anyone or anything political that is doing the work necessary to connect all of us and all of our issues – no matter how different – with policies and an approach that is as effective as it needs to be, whilst doing all that is necessary to reach across.

There will be The Reclaims, The Reforms, and many others who are selling change and a difference to what we already have in the way that they see it. Yet the elephant in the room for all of them is and will continue to be that they are behaving as if the problems we collectively face are just one issue, overlooking the reality that the only reason UKIP, The Brexit Party and Vote Leave won EU Elections and the EU Referendum was that people saw those votes as being purely about just one issue or thing.

I have no interest in doing any of the voices who speak on behalf of these or many other organisations down. In fact, I would like all those who oppose this tyrannical and self-serving form of government come together and do all the things necessary so that we can collectively succeed as one.

But coming ‘together’ in the way that it will need to happen in order for us to succeed will simply not happen whilst all of them look at our political system and continue to think that this situation or any of the problems we face can be solved by rattling on about only one thing.

Furthermore, it is not enough simply to pay lip service to all the other issues and think that by publishing manifestos or any other kind of marketing-based ‘promise’ that enough people will suddenly see and share the same point of view, and then propel you into government as the political option of choice.

To succeed now, you must connect. We must ALL connect.

People want to be treated and respected as adults again. Yet this is something that the political parties in parliament and our councils have long since forgotten to do. In fact, they are so drunk on the perception they have that voters have no choice but to vote for them, they no longer believe that connecting with the people is something they need to do.

They will not change whilst they retain or have any hope of obtaining power. And once they have been removed and have lost that, these are not the people we will want to give the same chances to hurt us all as they have been doing all over again.

Covid and everything related to it IS a single issue in electoral terms and so it is necessary for those who want freedom to return and embrace the conversation, debate and need to address all of the issues that are facing our society today, so that the electorate no longer believe that the only way the issue important to them have a chance of being solved is to see the existing mainstream Political Parties as the only option or choice.

Politics is a game and there is no way to escape this reality if you genuinely want to see us all embrace and facilitate change.

Single issue politics in a multi-issue political world will not solve any problem and it is only by becoming a multi-issue political movement that the single political issues for us all will ultimately be solved.

There’s nothing humane about algorithms being used to make life judgements and the A’ Level grade fiasco should be a lesson to us all

Regrettably, at the time of a National Crisis, it seems that the only thing original about the Johnson Government is its ability to repeatedly fuck things up.

I would like to be able to say that they have a legitimate excuse for doing everything that they have done since the Coronavirus Pandemic came into view. But they don’t. And whilst many still believe it right to support the Government because that’s what you should do, the real story and all the different truths that have ridden shotgun with the creation of this chaos will come to light, either when the public files are opened or this stupid political clique is replaced by someone who knows what politicians are actually supposed to do.

Of all the mistakes Johnson and his cronies have made so far, the one that illustrates the abject disconnect from all forms of decision-making-responsibility that is endemic within this political culture was that of using an algorithm to produce grades for our 18 year old, end-of-school students who inevitably see their A ‘Level grades as a pivot point where the success or failure of their entire lives is mapped out.

Without the intervention of school closures that were neither necessary and certainly weren’t thought through, the GCSE and A ‘Level exams process in the UK was already arbitrary in the extreme, overlooking the reality that many students are not academically inclined and of those who appear to be, some will never be masters of exam technique. But to then fully dehumanise the process and use an algorithm when another political choice meant that exams in the summer of 2020 could not be done is an injustice of an extraordinary kind.

Algorithms are great for working with number and sifting data of a numerical or quantitative kind. But they are next to useless when qualitative data or the real idiosyncrasies and circumstances of life are concerned and the only shortcut that this route was ever going to provide was one to treating all A ‘Level Students as if the history or chronology of the events, what they did and how they did it was identically the same – not to mention anything that is already discussed above.

Yes, the Universities application and offer process is annually constrained by numbers. But Coronavirus and the ridiculous steps that the Government has already taken meant that this was never going to be a normal year, and simply factors such as foreign student numbers no longer being as certain as ‘normal’ would have meant there are vacancies that our commercially focused Universities need to fill to make the sums add up – no matter the usual grades requirements involved.

There is no algorithm that can fairly explain or make account for the peculiarities of any individuals circumstances. It is both lazy and distinctly harmful to surrender human decision making to a machine when that machine can only ever account for the level of detail or date that it was programmed with.

Parents are naturally beside themselves right now and many have good reason to be. Young people who were about to break free of the perceptual barriers and ties of their background have been binned just because our politicians are not up to the job and incapable of thinking in a different way. But the real travesty beyond that which I hope as I write public pressure will force Johnson to fix, is the reality that algorithms are already playing a massive part in the formal electronic or -online’ relationships that we have everything from our use of social media, to how our job applications are managed giving recruiters an irresponsibly easy time to check that boxes are ticked and nothing else.

Algorithms and the people who use them to cut corners of make business processes ‘more efficient’ to cut costs are not only playing a massive part in the dehumanisation of relationships that has accompanied the internet age. They are also condemning people whose circumstances a computer code will inevitably overlook whilst denying the benefits of added value to businesses that before the created quasi sectors of HR and Recruitment evolved were always a major consideration of the employing managers – and still would be if they realised what a con and all-round injustice these algorithms and employing the services of the people who use them involve.

This corner cutting is pernicious and whilst the improvement in technology to in turn improve the user and end user experience is always something that we should aspire to, it should not necessarily mean that the advances are used to cut costs and jobs if that is what it can do. The quality of the relationship with people, the product and the all-round experience will always be compromised if it is indeed not lost and money or cost-saving should never be the basic law governing business when everything that we do in any business is ultimately always and universally about people and thereby the human relationship.

Teachers are not teaching our children during the Lockdown as they could and they should

If anything demonstrates just how out of touch and anachronistic the Unions are today, it will be the argument being staged on the front pages where Union Barons want to stop teachers going back to work amid the spurious argument that their Members won’t be safe from Coronavirus if they do.

The Daily Mail carries the headline ‘Let our Teachers be heroes’ which sounds great.

But as the whole Lockdown is being perpetuated on the back of myths the Government and its Behavioural Insights Unit created, it really would be good for everyone if Teachers focused on being the nations educators again.

They could begin by doing everything right now to help children of all ages learn as they can and should.

Parents shouldn’t have to wait for the Schools to return or for a discussion about when it will happen for this headline to be used.

To do so suggests the only thing that makes any employee a hero is if they leave their home and become exposed to the perceived increased risk of catching Coronavirus in a job that pays them and which they applied for at some point by choice.

Oddly, many of the people who would like to be heroes right now don’t have the opportunity that teachers have done since the start of the Lockdown and still do.

Technology like FaceTime and Zoom will allow and facilitate contact between teachers and children to be taught on a level not far short of a universal basis.

Oddly, Private schools are already filling this gap and in many cases offering a complete alternative timetable as they do. But State education is not.

Instead, parents of children in ‘free education’ who should today be in schools across the UK have had to manage the fallout of bored and disengaged children who want to do nothing because the people who need to motivate their academic studies are not available to them even in a basic coaching form.

Their teachers have instead relied on pages of dreary worksheets made available through clever portals that they tell us are a workable replacement for the work and the learning they would receive if they were physically in school.

Yes, some of our kids are motivated to utilise whats on offer to them however weak it might be. Like many other parents, I have one child who is and one who is not.

This damaging replacement for schooling that the Government and media have systematically overlooked doesn’t allow for the significant number of disengaged kids nor those that sit somewhere in-between.

The counter argument is likely be that as there are children (or parents) that don’t have access to the internet or to smartphones, schools cannot give to one or any number if they cannot be certain that they can give to all.

This is a sad, regrettable reality where rights and inclusion have been twisted by activists who have nothing to lose like our children do and have assumed the responsibly to police the workplace and every perceived misdemeanour that is involved.

The outcome is it is always the lowest common denominator in standards or achievements that inevitably comes out on top.

Parents who are desperately doing all they can to keep their jobs whilst working from home are not responsible for changing what any healthy child’s perception of their home vs. the school environment should be.

Home is home. School is school.

The only way to find a happy median in the shitty circumstances this Government created is for teachers to make the best of the situation and get actively involved.

Qualified academically or not, we are all capable of greatness or of being complete and utter fools

images (15) As humans we love difference. We love difference so much, we use it as a way to qualify other people by colour, gender, sexual orientation, financial and material wealth, social background, taste, appearance and in many other ways too.

Many of the benchmarks that we carry within our own personal make up as we attribute a value to others are unconscious or to the world outside us, secret from everyone’s view.

And the fact that we effectively make the judgements connected with our way of thinking behind closed doors, means that no matter how hard do-gooders attempt to legislate or rather control our behaviour, controlling other people’s thinking at a personal or very private level is a battle that even the most politically correct amongst us will never actually win.

So obsessed have we become with being able to legitimise our qualification of others when it suits us to do so, we have found it easy to use the markers that society legitimately provides to create yet another set of differences between ourselves and other people. One that stands far outside the purpose for which that system was intended, and the help that it was originally intended to provide.

For a long time, academic qualification has increasingly been used as the preferred way to distinguish the ability, attitude, application, intelligence and any number of other things about an individual that to the audience can be used to distinguish the capability of a person and whether for the purpose they are being considered, they are ‘qualified’ or not.

By-passing the cold, hard reality that academic qualifications, whether it be a GCSE, A’Level, Graduate Degree, Masters or Phd is simply another benchmark created in some particular persons (usually an academic’s) thoughts, the elephants of our society have fallen head over heels in to the trap of believing that academic standards portray the genuine quality or value of each and every individual or person.

They do not.

Yesterday, we witnessed the power of these maleficent social anchors at their horrifying worst, when Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner was ridiculed for having what are considered to be 4 very poor GCSEs and academically speaking, no more.

Whilst Labour and their principle spokesperson for Education demonstrate little credibility in terms of the policies they have been putting forward with an eye on the upcoming General Election at their Party Conference this week, there are few of us outside of Westminster who could list with fingers on one hand, the number of politicians from any one Political Party who we could hand-on-heart consider credibly, when it comes to fulfilling their roles properly, and being good representatives of the people too.

Perception is everything. Particularly so when it comes to the influences on our thinking and lives that is played out on social media and TV.

Just because an MP or politician looks good on camera, comes across as confident, sounds competent or can boast an academic cv that included Eton, Oxford or wherever it may be from, it is simply a fact that the reality and truth may be – and in the case of many of our sitting MPs – is that they are not ‘qualified’ by or by being any such thing.

Because we have learned and increasingly been conditioned against the value of the substance of life experience and the practical understanding of people, business, community, their experiences and views that time in the real world gaining knowledge of different situations brings, we have reached a stage where we look for things that make high-profile people stand out for all the wrong reasons, mistakenly thinking that they are right.

There is some rich irony in the fact that it was the Labour Government of 1997-2010 that pushed the envelope of qualification bias to its currently accepted extreme by suggesting that it was not only possible, but should be the case that everyone has a degree.

This malignant and ill-conceived step has itself contributed the biggest change in perception about what qualifies any person.

It has pushed us all much further away from regarding each and every other individual as being equal and the same.

Furthermore, the meddling of Angela Rayner’s political predecessors when in Government bears much of the responsibility for the commercialisation of Higher Education. The rancid truth being that many young people have been condemned to financial servitude by a past Labour Government by being encouraged to take degrees that nobody in industry values.

Others are being left behind simply because they are excluded by the perversion of a system that frowns upon anyone who is not academically inclined, or because they know that a lifetime of debt is not something that they can realistically afford.

Education in its real sense, is only partially academic in its make up. No matter how any person is educated, they are equally capable of greatness or of behaving like fools. And the suggestion that people are only capable of anything great if they have good academic qualifications is a premise that is fundamentally flawed.

When we finally have a Government led by politicians who are responsible and not so easily led, the hard decisions over the way that we educate and support our young people will be addressed properly.

The focus will be brought back to the basic reality that as teenagers, we are pretty much all either ‘heads’ or ‘hands’.

Once we value the fact that not everyone in their early teens is either ready or able to spend at least another 7 years in books, we can then get back to providing a real option of parallel educational – not academic pathways – that developed properly with business and the opportunities that Leaving the EU will give us, will mean that rewarding lives for people whatever their background and birth, will for a great many more of them be fully assured.

image thanks to businessinsider.com

Welcome to the Labour Party’s land of lost opportunity where nothing more than anger and the lowest common denominator rules

Any of us could fall into the trap of believing that that MPs from different Political Parties cannot be the same.

But they are all driven by the same self-interest, lack of real-world understanding, unbridled lust for power and manifested ineptitude.

All of which leads them to believe that their own narrow view of the world from the confines of the Westminster bubble means they can create whatever policy they like in isolation. That anything they haven’t thought of that connects to it in some way will just go on existing, untouched as before, and very much the same.

The ideas we hear from MPs from different Parties look and sound different. Their implications might appear to be very different too. But the end result or bottom line is that the madness coming from irresponsible people running our lives through government is, has and will continue to affect and hurt all of us – often in ways we cannot imagine – until we actually begin to suffer and experience the pain.

Irrespective of whatever the policy, its aim or the way it is sold to us might be, if it has not been conceived and created on the basis of doing what is right for everyone through its implications and consequences in both the short and longer term, the outcomes from that policy will always end up being wrong

Welcome to the Political world and culture that created Brexit.

That’s decades of poorly made, ill-considered and fundamentally flawed political decision making from politicians and MPs from all sides. The irresponsibility of self-interested glory seekers and careerists that have no respect for the the dynamics of cause and effect, the age of consequences that they have helped to create, nor the way that the relationship between public representative and the public they represent should be.

In these, The death throws of this old politics, the policies of all our Political Parties appear to be becoming more and more bold.

But whilst the Conservatives are trying to out Brexit the Brexiteers and the Lib Dems are planning to erase the whole thing like nobody would respond to it’s loss, it’s The Labour Party that again responds by taking a hammer and sickle to domestic institutions and policy as part of their own polarising attempt to suggest that they are the only Party that exists to benefit everyone.

Whilst education policy in this country is failing many of the young people within our schools, colleges and universities, the impact of that failure is one that has a considerable implications for us all.

Yet any policy that seeks to remove the differences that exist between everyone, just because our lives and circumstances will always be different, will not create a culture where everyone has the opportunity to do as well as they can, no matter how they start out or what they might be given.

Such mindless destruction will just create an experience for everyone that is dumbed-down, without aspiration, motivation or any of the benefits being available to anyone whether rich or poor, that are most often the guiding light that is shared by all.

Socialism’s failure is its inability to recognise there is a capitalist present within us all. The moment it did, Socialism would not exist.

Genuine equality of opportunity will not be created by destroying differences in infrastructure and driving the whole system that nurtures it towards the floor.

Equality of opportunity for all will be delivered by recognising the differences and reasons for reduced access to those opportunities that exist. By working around them with care and consideration for what will really work practically. And without any idealistic thinking that suggests you can simply change rules and then everything will suddenly look and feel the same.

But these Labour politicians and all of those like them don’t worry about what is best for all.

Their paucity of responsible thinking demonstrates a lack of creativity and with it consideration for why they were elected.

They all demonstrate a complete lack of respect for anyone other than themselves and the ideas they think will ultimately give them more of whatever they personally want.

There is no desire, no aim, no motivation amongst any of today’s political class to create a society where policy exists considering quality and experience of life, giving real opportunity for everyone who needs it and with it the opportunity of something better for all.

Labour’s new policy to destroy private schools represents the politics of greed and of envy. Where everyone other than themselves and those they recognise as their own can pay the real price.

These inept MPs are the people who already have more. And more always wants more.

But as usual, it’s all of us outside of their bubble who will bear the burden of the true cost.

The travesty of Tuition Fees was the commercialisation of education, the myth of qualification-related Social Mobility and the creation of lifetime debt for those who can least afford it

Somewhere, there was a cheer last week. Quieter than the Government was expecting. Bringing noises that didn’t sound quite as expected.

Yes, the dropping of Tuition Fees does sound good. But the question we should all be asking – just as we should have when they were first brought into being is ‘at what cost?’.

Living in the age of political idealism made manifest as we currently do, it is all too easy to get distracted by the noise from the media as new public policies are launched.

We fail to look beyond and see the true consequences of what the Government of the day is doing with our money, and what the legacy – and yes, what the fallout will actually be from everything they do.

The creation of Tuition Fees was one of the biggest travesties of them all, simply because it all sounded so good, whilst the negative impact and knock on effects across so many different areas of policy were simply too-far reaching to justify anything about it which was tangibly good.

The UK’s Education System has been failing us all for a long while anyway. But the impact from Tuition Fees was never going to deliver much that really helped anyone in the way that the genuine concept of equality in education for all really should.

That so many former, existing and future students are now destined to have a lifetime of debt must surely now be a given.

Yet it is through the accompanying shift of emphasis from quality of teaching to fee-generation and profit alone within the Further and Higher Education Sectors which has secured the Blair era one of its darkest, yet most unrecognisable legacies as the true cost of ‘degrees for everyone’ becomes manifest and begins to become widely known.

It should come as little surprise that the leaders of the Institutions in these Sectors are now worried that a restriction on Fees may begin a process where ‘struggling’ universities are set to close.

That is the true price of making education a business, where money should never have been the target of a reprioritisation of direction. And certainly not in a place where the benefit to the student, our industries and the National interest itself are so very closely entwined.

Beware the siren calls and suggestion of this being an attack on Social Mobilty too. Academic qualifications have only ever been a very small part of what it takes to get any one person through the perceptual barriers which hold so many people back. Whether they be school-age students, young people, graduates, career changers, returners or retirees, we all have a part to play in everyone else’s future too.

The reality is that the State should pay for everyone’s education. But in doing so, we must be practical and realistic about how access to education is applied and how much benefit is derived to us all from the provision of each and every course.

We must recognise that there is just as much value to be gained by opening up truly vocational opportunities for the less-academically-inclined at the age of 14.

And that as a result of doing so, not only would we release many young people from the painful and unnecessary realities of being in debt, we can also exploit the opportunity to create a parallel track of time-served and experienced trainees to support all of our businesses in a way that the obsession with degree level education has all but denied.

It would be far more sensible to begin this process of change now, accepting that neither the student nor the Nation itself can afford the process of awarding superfluous and non-beneficial degrees. And help the Sector to change through reform, rather than through a process brought on by necessity, which is what is currently sure to happen, if Politicians continue to think that money is the only benchmark by which the future of education can and should be defined.

Improving Social Mobility is about addressing the way decision makers think, not about academic education alone

The three key misunderstandings and fallacious barriers to Social Mobility are:

That Social Mobility issues only affect young people who are in their career development years
That the only way to improve Social Mobilty is through ensuring that everyone achieves a ‘full’ academic education and that the attainment of degrees is key
That Social Mobility issues relate to the achievement, progress or outlook of the individual and nobody else

With one evolution of the Social Mobility Commission having resigned because of lack of Government support and another now appointed in the image of all the same Establishment ideas, the key issues underpinning lack of progress in tackling the barriers to Social Mobility are still being overlooked and this travesty is set to continue further still.

As is often the case when a cause is given a label, the Social Mobility problem is an issue which has become closely aligned with just one interpretation of its cause. This closes down debate and dialogue about the much wider range of issues which attribute to reducing opportunities. It also excludes consideration of a wider malaise and certainly overlooks the real impact on not only the individuals affected themselves, but also upon the wider community as a whole.

Yes, many young people are overlooked because of the start they had in life. The place in which they lived. The schools which they did and did not attend. The qualifications which they did or didn’t gain.

But the reality is that it is a very long list of factors which prevent any one person from progressing.

The interpretation of someone’s validity on the road to progress and passing these barriers is not simply restricted to that of employers, educators or any of the external gatekeepers of opportunity.

No. The perception of not being good enough to overcome any barrier to Social Mobility can be that of the individual all on their own.

The obstruction to unhindered Social Mobility, is the many prejudices which are not and cannot be managed by regulation or by the methods of review and reform which have become the cultural norm in this Country.

In a society which has learned to make effect synonymous with cause, we overlook the real causes of societal problems and as such have no way to address the consequential effects.

The social justice warriors, the politically correct, the rights lobby and liberal left all congratulate themselves on the strangle hold of regulation which decades of manipulation and social engineering have helped them impose.

Yet the rules which govern Equality of Opportunity in their purest sense have actually made prejudices easier to employ.

Only now, beyond the scope of the processes which assure us that prejudices have been all but removed, they are less likely to be evidenced and hide in plain sight.

Yes, we have regulation against gender and sex discrimination. Race discrimination. Disabilities discrimination, Religion, Age and sexual orientation too.

But in creating these frameworks or safety notes, the idealistic engineers of this ill-considered social plan have provided the perfect opportunity for people to surrender ethical responsibility to being seen to adhere to the set of rules which now exist. They have been given a set of pillars that once worshipped, allow them to do whatever they want to by behaving in ways which legitimately go around these rules or sit somewhere in the spaces in between.

We now not only have a situation where decision makers can quietly be racist, sexist, or are allowed to quietly indulge any other prejudice we might not collectively like. They can continue to do so unimpeded.

The consequences of this ‘big vision’ engineering project create many other problems too. Problems which include disadvantaging the already disadvantaged and building barriers to progress which the very same people will now never cross.

And guess what. Yes. We find again that achievements exist only for the same few to easily win all over again.

Take for example the assault on the education system that the Blair Government undertook, with the overt aim of giving everyone the opportunity to gain a degree.

The result has been the commercialisation of the further and higher education system, leading to the prioritisation of winning fees, rather than focusing on the quality and commercial durability of the education provided. Running education as a business has almost certainly put its future in serious doubt.

It is a process which has already led hundreds and thousands of hopeful young people to begin professional life in serious debt and with academic qualifications which are to many businesses completely worthless.

Yet the debt-laiden graduates only find out too late that these quack qualifications don’t mean much at all to the world around them once they have left the supposed safety of the academic universe behind.

The world of big business and its new world of ‘created roles and specialisms’ has responded to the glorifying of academic qualification over the benefit of time-served experience by recognising degrees as a standard for anybody worth looking at. Not as a way to recognise specialism in itself. But as a like-for-like replacement in recent years for what would previously have been well illustrated by the attainment of 3 A’Levels, and only a few years before that just 5 GCSE’s.

Not everyone is cut out to be a CEO, Director or even a manager and non-academic people bring value to business which only when added to the contribution of real academics can it add up to a formula which is so much more.

The dangerous mix created by this non-stop meddling has fuelled the entitlement culture. Qualification has become more valuable than experience and experience is not of value to those who have qualifications.

Letters on a CV are seen as more important than attitude, motivation, or the many other life skills which business used to intrinsically value, which they now overlook. The system now unwittingly leads them to place applications from people who would should be the next generation of commercial superstars straight in the bin.

It doesn’t stop there, and within a tick box, risk-averse culture where Recruiters and HR Officers – that’s people who have and never will do these jobs themselves – have overwhelming power over recruitment processes, there is an untamed focus on identifying reasons to not even shortlist candidates – usually because they don’t have a degree.

Good people are now denied jobs where they can thrive and the employers and companies themselves never gain access to the wider pool of candidates where the real benefits of selecting people with the right experience rather than just a paper qualification lies.

The consequences of this social meddling are already far reaching indeed and because the UK could never afford to provide education to 21 years as a standard – which in itself was never needed, it was inevitable that a new form of educational discrimination would introduce itself. And it’s the worst one of all. The preclusion from opportunity for even more young people based simply on cost.

Just in this one example of social meddling focusing on education alone, where impractical idealists have tried to impose a system of restrictions based upon no experience that they have or have in no way never known, we can see how far reaching the impact on consequences of quixotic thinking can be.

This is a pattern which is unfolding itself over and over again within all the areas of our lives where lack of consideration has been applied to the consequences of imposing the ‘consideration’ of rights and ‘positive’ discrimination on a society which will always have its own mind and not the one which political busy-bodies which to create for it.

The barriers to Social Mobility are all about the way that we think.

But the change needed and the tools which will enable us to break down those barriers and make that change will only come when decision makers with the power and therefore the ability to oversee that change go through a voluntary process of accepting that they themselves need to think differently.

That change will come about as a direct result.

That change cannot and never will be imposed.

Idealism has given young people unattainable expectations within a land of the financially enslaved, where unhappiness is enhanced at a push-button rate

Verbal head scratching has for many months dominated the media, as our influencers and opinion writers try to come to terms with what really happened for the Labour Party at last Summers General Election.

Of course, the perplexity doesn’t stop there. Somewhere in an office near the Palace of Westminster, a Conservative Party which looks rudderless and without any sincere intention, is desperate to emulate a link with our Nation’s young people; one which appeareances tell them only Jeremy Corbyn could invent.

That people of any age can be intoxicated by drink, drugs, or by the romanticism of the political ideal that everybody should be treated in a same-size-fits-all category is nothing new. Joining a group to further the interests of ourselves is after all hardly something new. Yet the motivation for doing so for each of us will never be exactly the same.

Sadly, politics in the UK has been without real substance for a long time. Policy is made reactively in a very focused way. It does little more than address the effects of issues, rather than going any great distance towards tackling the causes themselves.

Against such a backdrop as this, it has become very easy for politicians to make hollow promises. Corbyn’s soon rescinded promise over scrapping tuition fees for university students was clearly one such gesture. But a population which has been conditioned to believe that we can trust in our leaders and political parties without question simply doesn’t look beyond the words as they are heard – whether it considers itself to be left, right, leave or remain.

Labour’s vote winning stunt is pertinent not because it is political or because it appears to have worked as it was intended. It is illustrative of the complexity of this real problem because it highlights the presence of many questions that politicians should not only be asking – but also answering. Questions about why the various experiences of the politically disenfranchised are now being so well exemplified by the experience of the young.

Higher Education is just one area affecting real lives which has seen its value overturned, whilst giving the surface deep appearance and sense of even greater opportunity being presented to all.

Young people are being actively encouraged to commit themselves to lifetime borrowing to take a wide range of degrees which themselves are increasingly considered by industry to be worthless in terms of the skills that they teach. The students themselves understandably believing that they will automatically find themselves within a glittering career just as soon as they leave full time education.

The commercialisation of the higher education sector has added to the problem considerably. The priority of what at one time would have been arguably some of the best academic tuition available in the world, having now been shifted from the quality of teaching itself, to the accumulation of profit and nothing else. The recent cases of outrageous pay for university leaders is all you will need to read.

Whichever way you look at it, the emphasis is about money. And the experience of education is just where this process begins.

Having been sold the faulty bill of goods which a degree education for many has now become, the opportunities to secure work which will enable young people to quickly move on without a need to go home to their parents is increasingly hard to find.

Profiteering in the housing market has made entry level purchases and tenancies impossible for many. Property prices being exponentially inflated beyond even their realistic ball-park level, with values now being pitched at the ground in the next town and probably way beyond.

The work which is available to many graduates offers career prospects way below what a degree level entrant had been taught to expect when they made their academic choice.

With the attainment of all degrees being deliberately sold to everyone as an academic elixir which will make a graduate in some way better than anyone else, it is little wonder that many see some occupations as simply being beneath them, not only as a job title itself, but in terms of the tasks they will now accept even as they are being on-the-job trained.

Effortless attainment has become the expectation of the next generation. It is backed up by an instant response culture of a click-button-world. And with media saturation reaching the point where we can perceive almost anyone as being accessible to us on our phones or in our own front room, it is little wonder that every young person who is prepared to do what they are told, expects that life will instantly reward them by appointing them as a rock star, MP or CEO.

The young and therefore all of us have been failed by the creation and propogation of a land of unattainable expectation. A fallacious future based on hollow promises, so that politicians can bathe in the glory of transient electoral and policy wins which add up to little more than pyrrhic victories.

For an entire population, a value set which reflects a practical, obtainable and satisfactory level of reality has now been denied. Aspiration has now been usurped by the need for glory and this is a prize you can only win if you make it big financially too.

Generations of politicians are responsible for this perfect storm. They represent all parties, and even those who are today continuing to perpetuate this evolution of chaos, would not recognise a pathway which for many others is already beginning to feel like doom.

The impractical idealism and romanticism of the left has created the illusion for some that a utopia exists where each of us can be equal whilst becoming a king or queen over all. This has been no less devastating than the unleashing of unregulated markets under the increasingly influential neoliberalism of the right, which demonstrates that it really is only those who have unfettred access to money who have any perceived form of real power. Very few of us believe in or have faith in the ability for us all to experience something beneficial in-between.

If government continues to do nothing to resolve this problem, we remain on target to become a Nation lost.

Yet resolution is not just as simple as the exchange of a few simple ideas.

After all, any person who would just like to live a simple lifestyle, without money, is in a position where they simply cannot.

image thanks to unknown

Education is currently failing the UK because the system we have in place today is based on the flawed idea that Equality is about sameness. True Equality comes with acceptance of the real differences that exist between us and in giving each and every one of us the best shot possible…

Equality is one of the greatest aims for any Country to have, whilst perhaps one of the most misinterpreted and therefore destructive concepts that that the UK has embraced.

Negative forms of discrimination have made many thinkers believe that the solution comes in the form of their positive counterparts. Yet the point has been severely missed that prejudicial forms of discrimination always relate to a form of favouritism or bias as a flipside on the other, and that this inevitable partnership necessarily follows wherever a form of positive discrimination may be used.

Just as racism and colour prejudice, sexism, discrimination against the elderly or disabled have and arguably in some cases continue to been a problem for many, giving special treatment or creating favourable circumstances for specific or what some prefer to call ‘underrepresented groups’ can be equally destructive and in some cases will actually affect many more, through little more than a legitimised form of disadvantage which many are simply too afraid to even talk about.

Social engineering is nothing new. But the silent subjugation which hides beneath the velvet glove of political correctness and an often misguided war for equalities is something entirely different. It now risks the identity of culture which has been at the heart of British life for many generations and which arguably kept us at the forefront of world industry, science and learning well in to the 20^th Century.

Of all the parts of life where we should be getting the fight for the equality of opportunity ‘right’, Education is probably the most essential, because of the key role that it plays for individuals, communities, industries and therefore the evolution of our entire culture – en-masse.

But at some point, somebody somewhere confused practicality with idealism. They exchanged the reality that being fair to everyone by giving them the educational opportunities that most fit individual need will give us all the best start in life, with the idealist view that putting everyone in the same environment and using the same forms of education, would somehow lead to everyone turning out the same.

It doesn’t. And the reason it doesn’t is because the only difference that should matter when it comes to education is that whatever the circumstances or how we are physically perceived by others, we are all different and we all learn differently.

So no matter what background we come from; whether we are rich or poor; black or white; male or female; able bodied or disabled, we all accumulate knowledge in different ways and will only achieve the very best that we as individuals can, if diversity within educational opportunities matches the diversity that exists with learning ability and indeed counters the factors which are external to learning but upon which learning and the ability to learn have been for too long so foolishly placed.

Whilst ‘dumbing-down’ or developing an educational standard based upon little more than ‘the lowest common denominator’ fills those who abhor anything even perceptively elitist in nature with complete joy, lowering academic standards for the more-academically-inclined simply reduces the numbers of those who would otherwise excel and therefore contribute differently and arguably more greatly to our society as a whole.

However, the real tragedy in all this is based upon all those who are not academically attuned at school age. Many who are unequipped to rise to such theoretical standard, perhaps because of nothing more than circumstances in their lives. Many, who just need their learning to be more practically and vocationally inclined – perhaps only at that time.

We all lose from the approach that has been adopted, as what is in effect manifest ignorance of those whose ability lies not with their heads but with their hands, is or has created a lost generation which unwittingly and in most cases unwillingly lend themselves to many of the welfare, benefits and crime statistics that so many of us know to be so wrong, but have to accept as being just the way that it is.

The lack of foresight and basic understanding of our fellow man that has led these socialist agendas which have pursued this ideology of everyone being the same, are not only destroying the lives and future chances of individuals who could make a considerable contribution to our society – were they given the fullest opportunity to do so; they are contributing to the creation an entire sub-culture of socially disadvantaged, socially inept and socially immobile people who are blighted by the media propagated caricatures that have been landed upon them by the same libertarian and quixotic idealists who inadvertently put those same people there.

Glorification of celebrity, fame, sensationalism and money have led many of us to forget that the very basic forms of all occupations are about us; about life; about putting food on the table; about being healthy; about being happy; about getting us where we need to go. Our values have somehow gone wrong and we have forgotten that every job or occupation is important and that we should all value them as such for the contribution that they make in our lives and the value that they bring to our society.

The ironies of this saga do not stop there. If we continue to flat-line the contribution that we make to the opportunities we give to the up-and-coming generations in the form of free education, the best opportunities really will be left as the preserve of the financially rich who can arguably afford a tailored level of education for their children which simply becomes unavailable anywhere else. If you are of those who think that Politics is skewed in favour of a privately educated elite right now, look what could soon begin to follow in the not too distant future.

Both socialism and liberalism as they exist are flawed. They are little more than idealistic philosophies that make no allowance for the realities of cause and effect, and if we don’t address this failure to address the need for balance in every aspect of life and policy that Government touches soon, the results simply do not bear thinking about.

The role that education plays in all our lives and how it reaches and extends into all parts of our culture, make it probably the very best place to start in addressing what could easily be called the regressive steps that the drive for ill-considered forms of equality have so far engineered.

Every part of the education system needs reform, which will only be controversial for those who continue to put their own ideas first, above the needs and requirements of others. Perhaps we could:

Reintroduce Grammar Schools in every District: The pathway of education for children to which so many parents aspire, Grammar Schools offer a benchmark in education and discipline that it has become unfashionable to appreciate vocally. This social anathema should be dispelled for the foolishness that it is and the opportunity should exist for all academically able children to gain a place at a Grammar School if they can attain the examination standards required and do not have alternative means to access a like-for-like education.

Reintroduce the 11+: With Numeracy and Literacy Skills at a low point, we simply must return to an acceptable level of basic education at this key age so that children are equipped to engage fully during adolescence in our increasingly information-based age, and employers can be sure that young people can not only understand, but also be understood. (Please follow this link for an insight on the 11+.)

Reintroduce real and vocationally based Apprenticeships at 14: Probably the most vital step that needs to be taken is to recognise that not all children are academically inclined and that the system today is failing too many young people because it has not nurtured them in a way which fits their learning processes. In simple terms, children are usually ‘head or hands’ and therefore more theoretically or practically able in their learning processes. In isolation, neither of these qualities is a sign of intelligence, yet children who simply aren’t academically able to make the best of the school environment are all too often considered disruptive and can of course be an unnecessary distraction for those who are suited to school learning. As we grow older, we can all appreciate how little we knew but how much we thought we knew when we were in our teens and providing a stewarded environment from 14 for young people who are better suited to life outside the academic environment would give them the opportunity to take guided steps into the adult world, whilst earning an appropriate level of pay and giving a staffing option to commerce and industry that could make a significant difference to business. Either subsidising roles or supporting complimentary training courses at Tertiary Colleges could still deliver a saving in real terms, whilst providing an investment in the individual, taking them off the streets, whilst supporting British industry with a potentially parallel vocational route to age 21 that would more than adequately make up in time-served experience and the hands-on accumulation of skills for life what academically biased young people gain via a complete route of full-time education.

Reintroduce National Service: With a break or shorter form of Apprenticeship, those young people taking the vocational route could perhaps choose to finish their training in the Armed Services from 18-21, with the option being there as a requirement to attend for all young people not being in education or Apprenticed vocational training between those ages. Those ‘finishing’ training could bring skills from industry that the armed services need at a time that a pool of such experience could be highly beneficial. Either way and however those young people came to join, there is no question that a military grounding would provide a sense of value and self-worth for people who might otherwise never receive it. Such a pathway could open the door either to an extended military career or to the motivation and direction to move forward and make the best of the other opportunities that are on offer to those who value themselves and what they will inevitably gain to do it.

Return to more challenging forms of Exams at 16 and 18: The earlier part of this Coalition Government saw a series of attempts by Education Secretary Michael Gove to reform exams and return to the former O’ Level and A ‘Level or Baccalaureate standards. It’s a desperate shame that he was prevented from doing so as the realities of the flaws in our Education system would quickly become evident and would perhaps highlight just how severely our children are being failed by a system which is currently geared to treating everyone as if they were exactly the same; a system that is benchmarked for its quality not by aspiration, but by the rule of the lowest common denominator. Life is by its very nature challenging and the exams that we take at 16 and 18 should genuinely represent the milestones that they are, rather than just being something that we do. If degrees are to again have the meaning to industry that they once had, it necessarily follows that these checkpoints of the educational pathway should be high on expectation too.

Restructure the way that Higher Education is funded: The Government cannot afford to fund the number of places within Higher Education that the drive to give everyone a degree has required. The fallout from this has of course been the creation of Tuition Fees which in themselves are creating lifetimes of debt for students who may have been a great deal happier taking other routes to learning. The fragility of funding streams has driven many Higher Education establishments to behave more and more like businesses as their focus moves from providing the best education for students to ensuring the survival of the organisations – and the jobs that they provide. This does not contribute to society on a wider level and the focus needs to return to providing the best Degrees possible and not necessarily the ones that generate the best fees from providing them. Bringing the return of value to pre-University level and parallel vocational forms of education would counter much of this, but as with areas such as the NHS and Local Government, there has to be a recognition of the need for overall change as part of a new bigger and reforming picture. This could realistically mean the loss of University Status or even closure for some institutions. But what was really wrong with polytechnics anyway.

Refocus on exam-based scholarship entry opportunities to all private schools for children whose families would otherwise be unable to afford them: Whilst some would happily see the demise of private schools in much the same way as Grammars have all but disappeared, Private Schools should always have their place, if nothing more than to allow those who can afford to pay the choice to do so. However, such institutions should also be available to children who would thrive with the support of such an environment and the schools themselves should be required to make a certain number of places available through exam-based scholarships each year for children who have the academic ability to meet the standards of each specific school, but would otherwise be held back by lack of financial resources.

Stop bringing the blame-claim-culture into schools and let teachers get on with educating: Parents do have a role to play too and I will not be alone in remembering the absolute horror which our parents would experience upon learning that we had been in trouble or had been reprimanded for being disruptive in school. The balance has changed and there is now an unwritten expectation that all children are perfect and that they can never be at fault. The complaints culture and accompanying insinuation that a complaint is just a step away from a claim is paralysing disciplinary standards with the creation of fear on the part of Teachers to act against unruly children who only 30 years ago would have had a string of detentions or worse from the school, along with a right good rollocking from their parents just as soon as they returned home.

Introduce standard educational apps on all electronic devices which will be used by children: Technology and the influence that it has upon us all is marching ahead at a hellish pace. Children are already using tablet computers before they can do many other things. We are currently missing the opportunity to work with manufacturers and potential sponsors to utilise these devices which immediately make fascinated children a captive audience. The development of standard apps which can be used to develop reading, language and other skills for the benefit of children and that of the education system which will very soon follow could be immeasurable. There is no doubt that Government should be working closely with manufacturers and Companies such as Google, to develop acclimatised software which is included within the operating platform of the machines at the point of sale and makes the very best of the learning opportunity which is literally presented for them there at hand.

Education by its very nature is supposed to assist the evolution of people, rather than becoming a tool which does little more than help a society to regress. Great ideas will not help all people if they are not developed with the needs of every single person in mind and education is currently failing in the UK because the system we have in place today is based on the flawed idea that Equality is about sameness.

It’s time that we stopped trying to force people to change in ways that they simply cannot be changed; accept the good that exists in the real differences between us, and start giving each and every one of our children and young people their very best shot.

Source of top Image unknown

Labour’s ‘jobs guarantee’ for the unemployed: Politicians should guarantee their own jobs by giving industry the policies and systems that work for business so that business itself can start working for us all.

Tackling unemployment should be an issue for any Government. But Labour’s attempt at generating meaningful headlines with meaningless content will do little to reassure either business or the unemployed about what the post 2015 future may hold. It will also do little to enhance Labour’s kudos on matters of care for the elderly if they are planning even more ‘Brownite’ onslaughts upon the pension funds of those who are already working.

Subsidising low-paid jobs does little to incentivise those who have not already taken them, but does a great deal for companies who need and profit from a low-skilled workforce; staff who require minimum induction or ongoing training alongside next-to-no supervision; all packaged neatly within a low-risk environment.

People should not be fooled either by the idea that cash-strapped charities would immediately benefit from having unskilled staff delivering services which may currently be undertaken by experienced volunteers, when such staff themselves would in all likelihood require supervision at much greater cost.

Perhaps I will not be alone in seeing the irony that the only businesses which can therefore profitably gain from the implementation of these ideas are primarily the big retailers, who are already targeting such groups for their shop-floor staff pools and don’t actually need Government money to help them do so.

The retail fat-cats must surely be laughing themselves all the way to the bank as they thank the gods of democracy in anticipation of the delivery of such idiocy made manifest in political form.

Getting people of all ages into work isn’t just about job creation. It is about empowering business, education and developing skills based upon the strengths of the individual, rather than devaluing the future of a whole generation on the basis of the weaknesses of groups.

If Westminster politicians were to adopt a more reasoned and practical approach, they might conclude that tackling employment issues tomorrow might be better served by tackling the causes of unemployment today. They might also conclude that the unemployed and disenfranchised young people of today, may well become the long-term unemployed and unemployable of tomorrow. Can it really be that difficult to see how many of these issues actually roll into one when you think ahead?

As Education Secretary, Michael Gove has impressed many with his fervour to return a world-class British system of education for school-age children. But will that really go far enough if it actually happens?

Children are always different and will always react differently to education. Some work best with their heads, whilst some will always work better practically and ‘with their hands’. Any system of schooling which therefore doesn’t recognise that difference and more importantly cater for it, is going to fail many of those who might otherwise go on to succeed – especially when that difference may just have been a simple issue of age and time at individual level.

Returning to a fully parallel and universal system of academic and vocational education from the age of 14 would be akin to pushing the first domino in a whole run of social issues concerning us now and for the future – however ‘un-PC’ they may be.

Removing red tape and legislation that currently prevent businesses of all sizes from employing teenagers at realistic wages during realistic hours and within the real-world employment environment, could give non-academically inclined children the real hope of attaining like-for-like qualifications through the timed-served, rather than the academic route.

Creation of the ‘apprenticeship-degree’ would bolster the competitiveness of British Industry and business of all sizes which themselves would then be able to draw upon an affordable pool of trainees, making investment in their future entirely more feasible; whilst taking Young People off the streets, giving them value in themselves, money in their pockets and taking them away from crime which the Country can already ill-afford to tackle.

Savings to Government from no longer filling what are arguably wasted places in schools could be significant, even if some funds were then redirected to tertiary and higher education colleges which support the vocational route for many of what would be the mile-stoned route to that real and vocationally-based degree. And let’s face it, degrees need to regain the value that the one-size-fits-all mentality of the last Government did much to destroy, whilst giving all those who actually want to work the opportunity to do so.

Getting the unemployed who want to work into work will always be a job done better by employers. Politicians should guarantee their own jobs by giving industry the policies and systems that work for business so that business itself can start working for us all.

Businesses are not inherently academic, so why are degrees becoming the prerequisite skill?

Latest news suggests that without more degree level education based skills, the UK will experience an exodus of jobs overseas to emerging economies. But when we already have students doing degrees just for the sake of doing them and a basic education system which sees school-leavers failing to possess even basic literacy and numeracy skills, should we really be thinking about pushing more through a university education as the immediate priority?

Like it or not, many young people are neither cut out nor ready for an academic pathway from or even during secondary education. Simply creating more courses to include a wider selection of students is hardly the answer and is fast leading to the existence of meaningless degrees, which won’t help business, and don’t help the students themselves who these days will have had to sell their soul to get it.

One of the greater injustices of recent political times is the idea propagated by New Labour during the 1997-2010 period of Government that everyone could be the same and do the same things. Such socialist ideology permeates itself by changing – or rather levelling systems throughout society to treat everyone the same under the ideal that to do so is providing ‘equal opportunities’. However, as we are all different – and often in ways that cannot be seen with the naked eye – this method is not only obtuse in the extreme, it has contributed to the creation of a society where younger generations are becoming lazy and without ambition. When you add to this the burden of taxation which is placed upon higher wage earners for daring to do well and the resentment they experience if they do so, neither do you leave in place any real motivation to be any different or encourage the social mobility that the same idealist meddlers suggest to be a milestone of progress.

The good behind many ideas, policies and concepts is often lost when change is enacted simply for the sake of change and this is no less so within education as elsewhere. Whilst the technology age has altered the requirements for skills throughout the industries, the historic format of leaving school at 14 and becoming ‘apprenticed’ was a much better way to foster learning in those who were more ‘hands than head’ at the time, and could as such provide lessons in forming the basis of a very radical and effective way to change the way that we develop our National skills base for business and industry.

Why not:

Remove the burdens of red tape which govern the working environment for younger people.
Develop an effective subsidy allocation and training scheme to assist participant businesses to replace unused school places, ‘young to work’ schemes and unemployment benefits.
Give business a cost-effective motivation to support vocational or ‘on-the-job’ training for 14-21 year olds who in that time, may well have attained the equivalent of academic training in parallel skills and real-world experience, which may in fact have far more use to companies than ‘green’ graduates who refuse to stuff envelopes because they have a degree.

Business can only get the best from employees if they have been nurtured within a system which allows and encourages them to be their best – in whatever way that may be. Even the suggestion that you must have a degree level education to make an effective contribution is not only short sighted; it fails to recognise that a true acceptance of diversity goes way beyond embracing race, impairment, sexuality, location or social group and that each pathway to learning can be highly beneficial to society with real opportunities put in place to appreciate it.

Equality in Education has been destroyed by the idea that all can make the best of the same opportunities

I seem to have the phrase ‘cause and effect’ branded in my thought processes right now as I look at all of the problems with Government and no less so when recently reading yet more bad news about struggling school pupils failing to catch up. But is anybody really surprised?

One of the greatest problems with modern government and law-making is that once an issue has been addressed, the people who have been put in place to deal with that issue then have nothing to do – unless of course they create something else to justify their existence. Have a good look at every area of life where some kind of policy has been created or exists and you might just begin to see what I mean.

The problem with this process is that whilst you can easily see that some things do benefit from being revised from their original form to meet a need which was not originally considered or indeed, to bring that a policy or law up-to-date to meet or to be applicable to contemporary need, the rise of the bureaucrat and ‘professional’ politician has led to unnecessary meddling and the creation of having laws for laws sake. This is particularly evident in matters such as education.

The value of education has been appreciated for a long time but the system we have probably began the headlong descent that we are now experiencing when the concept of real apprenticeships was lost and the school leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972. Speak to what some might call ‘old school’ educators and they will tell you that children were either ‘heads or hands’; the inference being that they were academic or practically inclined. Would you hear a teacher say the same in a similar conversation today? No.

The 1997-2010 New Labour project oversaw much of the destructive push towards blanket qualification levels which now seem to be the accepted way to enhance an evolving society. Put simply, the approach of such meddlers is to work on the basis that the easiest way to improve education is to make the education fit the population, rather than encourage the population to meet the demands of the time. Now is that real equality or just a twisted view of it which is taking our once highly educated and envied Nation backwards?

Everyone is different for many reasons, not least because of their genetics, demographics and social conditioning. It is therefore sheer folly to believe that by applying the one-size-fits-all mentality that you will create a perfect and fully functioning society by making everyone equal ‘by default’. We currently see high levels of youth unemployment and dissatisfaction with the system (Something apparently highlighted by the August 2011 Riots), but again no real attempts to address the causes of these problems being made by the very people who could genuinely make a difference.

There are many young people who don’t want to be in ‘school’ and others who just don’t get the benefit from a dumbed-down degree system where 3 years of undergraduate study provides what could be a lifelong debt and a qualification that industry views as useless, all against the backdrop of a Government that cannot afford to provide such diversions in the first place. The balance has been lost and somebody needs to get this all back where it should be so that each and every individual can follow a route to a career which gives them the best opportunities to realise all that they can achieve based on what they are capable of doing; not what some idealist in London thinks it right that they should do.

Rather than scratching heads about the escalating problems created by the decline in standards in education, why not get back to a basic appreciation of the fact that everyone has something unique to offer and that in itself requires real diversity of opportunities and not one which is offered by an encyclopaedic exam syllabus. Put 14 year-olds who have no academic inclination – or don’t recognise one at that age – into real 7-year vocational apprenticeships in industry and SME’s where time and application give them the career footing that they would otherwise never achieve?

Why not begin to rebuild the ‘time-served’ bank of talent and experience that no amount of schoolroom activity can provide our dwindling industries and hungry-for-help businesses with, in a cost effective way which reduces the burden on the State and will probably address all manner of other issues hurting society at the same time such as youth crime?

I can almost hear the ‘it won’t work because…’ right now. What – because of employment laws or other legislation? – That’s exactly the point and the very reason we are getting into more and more of a mess isn’t it?

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