Averaging out currency vagaries, the UK is the 5th largest economy on Earth; and yet …
The UK gave the world the global language of English; and yet …
We have the most open economy in the world. We’re the location of choice for inward investment; Number Two in the World after America and Numero Uno in Europe; and yet …
Three of our Universities are in the Top Five in the World and no country on the Planet except the USA has more Universities in the Top Fifty; and yet …
We are on the verge of throwing away all those advantages; we are staring down the double barrels of social disintegration and economic relegation.
Precisely at the moment when we must trade our way out of our financial problems …
Precisely at the time when we must put an end to a culture of giving out money that we cannot afford to people to whom we will be doling out benefit for the rest of their lives instead of giving them the tools and the skills to take responsibility for themselves and others in communities …
Precisely at the point when the world’s markets are growing again and are ready to be exploited by a value-added, innovative, free-trading nation such as the UK …
After eleven years (and this Government has been in continuous power for longer than that, so there can be no blaming its predecessors) of free, compulsory and fulltime education, nearly half the young people who will sit their GCSE’s this Summer will not get Grade C or above in English and Maths … and they’re the ones who take them!
20% of the Adult population of our country cannot read to the standard expected of an 11 year old. Nearly a third of all adults in the UK cannot add up two three-figure numbers.
This is a disgrace!
Nearly half the product of our education system is not fit for purpose in the globalised economy of the 21st Century. The world of work has fundamentally changed. Ministers talk of job opportunities in a green economy; UK Manufacturing is alive and well; BUT there will be no jobs for those who can’t read, write and count!
Quite apart from the severe financial damage and loss of productivity, jobs and profits (and therefore taxation revenues) that the absence of a skilled workforce causes us (ask any business what it wants most from a business-friendly environment and the answer is always the same; a skilled workforce), we are storing up:
Huge additional costs for the NHS (people who have signed-out of the workplace through illiteracy and innumeracy lose their self-respect and don’t take care of themselves),
More damaging levels of crime (people who lose hope often think that the man on the street corner selling white powder has the answer and then they steal and rob to pay for it).
And we are delivering this Country into a self-perpetuating vortex since kids go home to a house without books and have no encouragement to improve; whole families live on Benefit and teachers don’t stand a chance!
Someone once said “Education, Education, Education”. Well … Globalisation doesn’t take prisoners; if we keep paying out taxpayers’ money for failure instead of equipping the people and delivering them hope then the whirlwind our children’s generation will reap frankly doesn’t bear thinking about!