Last updated 12:12, Monday, 08 December 2008

Mick Farley - UCLan's director for Cumbria

Mick Farley: ‘The £2m is there in the bank account’

THE election in America of a black President, Barack Obama, is of major historical significance. And when America changes, the UK is usually affected.

But what difference will his election make in Britain where we still have institutionalised racism; where support for the British National Party is growing in some places; where black sports stars are subjected to racial abuse; and where the education system substantially fails black children, many of whom still under-achieve?

In Barack Obama’s first speech as President-elect he made two significant references to education. He spoke of the worries people have about how they’ll “save enough for college”. And boldly said there are “new schools to build”.

Both resonate in this country, where there are concerns that university education is becoming too expensive, leading to massive student debt. And where the Government’s “Building Schools for the Future” and academies programmes mean that new schools are being built.

Under-achieving schools are another concern for Americans – about 30% of high school students fail to complete their education and the scores of 15- year-olds in both science and maths are well below the average for all OECD* countries. Failure of some young people to achieve their full potential is also of concern in the UK.

The President-elect undoubtedly intends his Federal Government to intervene to tackle education issues. He shares our own Government’s belief in investment in early childhood education, promising to create Early Learning Challenge Grants for pre-school provision. He intends to invest in programmes to encourage more students from low-income families to go to university – our Aim Higher by another name? And he wants to make university more affordable by creating a new Opportunity Tax Credit.

In contrast, what a pity our own Government last month announced that student grants are to be cut for new students starting higher education courses next year. This U-turn followed the discovery of a £200million overspend and sees the reduction in the upper limit of grant entitlement reduced from a family income of £60,000 to £50,020.

But there are other aspects of American education that our Government intends to draw on. In the unexpected announcement of major reforms to school accountability, including an end to compulsory national tests for 14-year-olds, the Government announced the introduction of new ‘School Report Cards’ which adopt the successful model being used in New York City.

*OECD – the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development which involves more than 100 countries.