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Tuesday 18 June 2024

Education and soft power

This is a quick post about two matters.  

The first is university education.  The current government plans to make university education in the UK less attractive by making it harder for them to work in the UK after graduation.  I think that this is silly as our universities rely on income from foreign students to allow those who are here to study at reduced fees.  Sure, it is not like the grant that I had when I was a student (I was at the beginning of the student loans system), but education would be far more expensive if it was not for those from abroad.  As it is, may get reduced offers.  Make it harder, and a lower quality of student will come which means our educational institutions will not be as good as they otherwise would be.  University education in the UK is respected abroad.  Let us keep it so and therefore increase the soft power of the UK.


The next are private schools.  I do not consider them to be charities.  Before the last election, while I agreed with Corbyn that they should be abolished, I did not think that it was the right time to do so as the nation had other priorities.  My view on this has changed and I think that they should exist, because, again, it is a form of soft power.  I think that it is insane that they are considered to be charities.  I think that they should be able to claim money back on tax for the charitable work that they do, but Eton is not a charity, it is a business.  The extra tax receipts from ending the charitable status of these businesses will help state education which has been underfunded too much since 2010.

Basically, I think that Britain is Great.  We need to work to keep it that way and education is one of those ways.