| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Comprehensive Schools - Conclusive Evidence | |
| Posted by: | Tom Pike | |
| Date/Time: | 23/02/12 13:20:00 |
| David, A comparison of spending on education within Europe is indeed illuminating. Here's the data: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Expenditure_on_educational_institutions,_2003_and_2008_(1).png&filetimestamp=20111117102022 If you compare across the EU for the latest 2008 figures, the UK public expenditure is pretty close to the average, at 5.4% GDP (EU average 5.1%), but the private sector takes another 1.7%, the highest in the EU and more than twice the average of 0.75%. What we get for that money in average PISA scores is 500. Finland, at the top of the class with 544 spends 6.1% on its state education (and only 0.2%, the lowest in the EU, on private), while at the bottom of the class Romania spends 4.3% on state education (and 0.5% private) for a score of 426. Looking at all of the data for the EU countries, we sit pretty much on the trend in terms of PISA scores for public money spent. However, if you add in private expenditure, we are getting a rather poor return as a country. Similarly, if you split up resources into equivalent spend per student, we also don't perform very well for the €8k equivalent spend per student overall in the UK. But the amount spent very much depends on where the student is educated. For the 93% in the state schools, it's around €6.5k, just about on the EU average, but for the 7% in private schools it's €27.5k. Our private schools, with much larger resources per pupil, don't seem to be pulling up the national scores. In fact OECD found UK fee-paying schools were a drag on our national results in that for the profile of pupils educated, they underscored by 20 points on PISA compared to our state schools. The 2010 OECD report "Viewing the UK School system through the prism of PISA" is well worth a read: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/33/8/46624007.pdf Compared to the rest of the EU, our state education looks like it's broadly delivering the results, as measured by PISA, that you might expect for the money, though our fee-paying schools are underperforming by some margin while spending three times as much. |