WALK IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF SIR KEN ROBINSON. Student Loans are a bad good idea!

FOR STUDENTS, THEIR PARENTS, TEACHERS AND FOR RISHI SUNAK, CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER.

“What we call the beginning is often the end … The end is where we start from.” TS Eliot ‘Little Gidding’ The Four Quartets.

Over ￡100billion in the UK and over $1Trillion is spent on Student Loans despite Austerity, more every year.

They are a bad good idea. Social mobility is not much better. They ignore half of the school cohort that misses Uni altogether, giving them a sense of failure. In today’s world they offer no guaranteed passport to success in life. No guarantee of a job or the continuation of one. Instead a debt burden – inflation a threat to repayment – and debt slavery where you do what you are told because you cannot afford not to.

The late Sir Ken Robinson urged, sadly to deaf ears during his lifetime: “Creativity is essential to the success and fulfilment of young people, to the vitality of our communities and to the long-term health of the economy.” Opportunity for all makes a bigger statement than an equal opportunity for some to go to Uni.

The buzz words should be Diversity, Creativity, Excellence, Self-esteem. Stop trying to level those who cannot be levelled and do not want to be.

The secret of social mobility is the more winners in life, the fewer the losers.

Click Student Podcast 3 Part 1 The Bear Trap.

The key is to recognise that we are equal only sometimes, unequal most times and different always.

Keep the National Curriculum for the “brainy”, the scientists and the medics and technocrats who need three or more years study in a University setting.

However provide an Alternative Curriculum for the “bright eyed and bushy tailed”, often in SMEs in the private sector, street wise more than book-wise. This could include Design, DIY, healthy diet and cooking, drama and poetry, human rights, conversational languages, the world’s faiths and mutual respect, the environment – Greta Thunberg stuff. Holistic, to be enjoyed and valued for a lifetime not just for a job, and open ended.

The “bright eyed and bushy tailed” have no time for three years’ University study, but one-year courses in a University could sharpen their cutting edge in a highly competitive world if the Universities could be sufficiently clued up to provide them. Their firms would fund them as a business expense.

Meanwhile bring back State Scholarships. They encourage ambition and promote excellence, never mind inequality. But keep them to those disciplines the country needs, for scientists, doctors & nurses, and urban planners.

Beyond that there should be lots of scholarships but funded by banks, insurance companies, legal and accountancy firms, blue chip companies paying a graduate tax, not levied on graduates but on those who employ them. They could either pay the tax or provide their own scholarship awards for university applicants. In nature animals feed their young. Watch David Attenborough!

And there should be gap years for students - but not from university - from SME’s in the private sector taking one-year courses at Uni; students’ fees would be a business expense, providing an additional skill of value and would not be a charge on the students.

Schools should be for their pupils and Universities for their students, not the other way round, and there should be an end to the triarchy of the public sector, the private sector and Academia, each in their own silo, each thinking they are the important bit. And end to the constant “You and US” in society.

Instead, especially in education, there should be a team game of all three investing in the students of today, the future of tomorrow, and not at their expense.

Very simply the more winners there are, the fewer the losers there will be.

Click Student Podcast 3 Part 2 Opportunity for all, but not equal.

OVER TO YOU. A GOOD BRAIN EXERCISE HERE. YOU MAY HAVE TO LOCK DOWN YOUR BODY in COVID-19. YOU MUST NOT LOCK DOWN YOUR BRAIN.