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n what kind of a world would it make good sense to spend a quarter of every pound spent on school education on just seven per cent of children, and the majority of your budget for the education of adults on younger adults aged between 18 and 20? On what planet would you be living if you thought it proper to spend the most on further educating the already best-qualified minority among these young adults – those who migrate from home to study at a few ancient colleges – while those who have up to now benefited the least get the least spent on them?


Of all the affluent or semi-affluent countries that the economists at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) compare, only


16 ADULTS LEARNING APRIL 2010


Chile spends a higher proportion of its combined public and private education budget on children in private schools than does the UK, and only in England are young adults sorted so carefully between so many universities. And, of all the richest countries of the world, only in the United Kingdom are discussions under way to make an already elitist system much more elitist. National budget restrictions are leading many to suggest that ‘variable fees’ should now be used to fund higher education – for an early warning read the submissions made to the higher education funding review (http:// hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/), and pay particular attention to those from the University of Oxford, and the headteachers of public schools.


Meanwhile, in further education, colleges


are bracing themselves for a cut of £200 million to their adult course budgets; with institutions facing an average budget reduction of 16 per cent for adult learning. Forty-three of 162 colleges surveyed by the Association of Colleges said that their budgets for adult learning were being cut by 25 per cent for 2010-11. These reductions, which come on top of year after year of cuts and of a gradual narrowing of opportunity for adults wanting to learn, will impact directly on some of the least advantaged and most vulnerable learners and contribute to further growth in the inequality which characterises much of life in Britain, and its education system in particular.


In a country in which, even after the


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