Funding Education

In my previous post I detailed how the state education sector was clearly failing and how this could be addressed with the use of vouchers.

But how much would all this cost?

Well, firstly, lets assume we do introduce education vouchers.

Secondly, that the vouchers are worth £4000 per pupil to age 18 and £10,000 per uni student.

There are about 8,430,000 kids aged 5-16 so thats about £33bn.

There are about 1,600,000 aged 17-18, assume 85% stay in education thats about £5.5bn.

Assume 2,460,000 aged 19-21 and 60% go to Uni, thats about £15bn.

Thats a total of £53.5bn, add on a generous .5bn for central admin gives a grand total of £54bn.

At the moment the gov’t spends £78bn on education, my figures allow us to reduce taxation by £24bn.

But is £4000 a year enough. Imagine a class of 25 kids, that’s £100,000 a year into that classroom. This is easily enough money to pay for teachers, books, equipment, building etc.

Incidently, £4000 is the average funding per pupil for an LEA in 2005/6.