Education is a right and a social benefit, not a commodity to be traded by the rich

After nine years of deliberate Tory vandalism the UK education system is in absolute chaos, but Labour have a fantastic proposal to reverse this damage and make the British education system fit for purpose again.

Under Jeremy Corbyn Labour have developed some fantastic policies, such as publicly owned not-for-profit rail, national grid, water supply and Royal Mail, a National Investment Bank like Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund, decentralisation of political and economic power, restoration of the NHS, investment economics instead of austerity fanaticism, and the long-overdue closure of the depraved Tory disability denial system.

But the shining jewel in Labour's policy proposals is the establishment of a National Education Service to provide quality education, for free, to all who require it.

It's a fantastic idea because access to a good education is a right, and an obvious benefit to all of society. And the Tories are horrifyingly wrong to have treated education as a commodity to be traded for profit by the rich.

The Tory damage

The damage the Tories have done to our education system over the last nine years will echo down the generations in the form of squandered opportunities, misallocated resources, wasted potential, and unpayable debts.

From the roots of the education to the branches Tory education policy has been a disaster. Here's just some of the detail.

• The imposition of unprecedented 8% school funding cuts since 2010, inflicted as a result of the Tory fixation with economically illiterate austerity fanaticism (to check the damage they've done to your local schools since 2015 use this school cuts calculator).

• Tory contempt for humanities and the arts has resulted in a sustained ideological attack on stuff like arts, drama and music in schools. The Tories don't seem to give a damn that the creative industries is one of the few areas where the UK is still a world leader, nor that this sector is now worth over £100 billion per year to the UK economy.

• Inequalities between schools have been dramatically exacerbated by Tory education reforms, meaning that whether your kids get a good education or a poor one is even more of a Postcode lottery than it ever was before.

• 75% of secondary schools in England transferred to the ownership of shockingly unaccountable and profiteering Academy chains which are designed to topslice our (already diminished) kids' education budget via bloated executive salaries.

• The imposition of outrageous levels of student debt via £9,000 per year university fees on rip-off inflation+3% repayment terms that mean 83% of post-2012 graduates will never pay them off, despite entire working lifetimes of paying out 9% of their disposable income in "aspiration tax".

• The Tory fixation with austerity dogma has had its most damaging effect on the education system in adult education, which has suffered an astounding 45% funding cut since 2010. It should be stark-staringly obvious that a well-funded and easily accessible adult education and retraining system should be a vital component in an ever increasingly volatile jobs market, but the Tories have cut it to shreds.

National Education Service

Labour's concept of an integrated National Education Service to provide quality education from cradle to grave is absolutely brilliant, and could revolutionise education in the same way that the introduction of the NHS in 1948 revolutionised our health system and improved our nation's health.

Stop the profiteering

The right-wing idea that education is a commodity to be traded by the rich is an affront to basic common sense.

The primary purpose of an education system should be to provide the best standard of education, not to extract quick profits out of the system.

It's just absurd short-term thinking to think about the education system as a primary source of profit (via profiteering academy chains, dodgy no-bid supply contracts, rip-off student debt repayments ...) rather than a crucial component of future economic prosperity.

The better educated we are as a nation, the more economic potential we have, and the more cash that gets siphoned away in bloated executive salaries and private profits, the less is left to actually spend on the principal task of providing a quality education.

The establishment of a National Education Service would squeeze out the profiteers and reorientate our schools, colleges, universities, and adult education facilities back towards what always should have remained the primary objective: providing the best possible education.

Workforce flexibility

Perhaps the most obvious area where the National Education Service would be an advantage would be the provision of adult education and retraining.

Instead of using draconian sanctions to hound people into finding work (that often simply doesn't exist), referrals to the National Education Service for retraining would clearly be an awful lot more effective.

Someone who loses their job in their 50s doesn't need hounding and abusing until they find work, what they probably need is a skills upgrade, from computer literacy to new skillsets entirely, and a National Education Service that provided these courses free of charge to anyone who needs them would be an obvious economic benefit to the nation in the long-term.

Education for all

One of the most commonplace right-wing whinges goes along the line of "why should I pay for other people's education opportunities when I didn't get a good education myself".

This unbelievably selfish but incredibly commonplace whinge would be eliminated by the introduction of a National Education Service providing access to free education for all.

If everyone is entitled to free education and training, then the only ones left whinging would be those who don't want to benefit. "why should I pay for other people's education opportunities when I don't want to be educated myself" doesn't have quite the same impact does it?

Policy-based debate

The proposal of a National Education Service is a fantastic policy, but few people know about it because the Tories and their cheerleaders in the mainstream media know that Labour and the left would win hands down when it comes to policy because the general public strongly support most of it (see image).

That's why politics is continually debased to such an extent with an endless barrage of trivial nonsense and outright smears.

Corbyn didn't bow properly. Corbyn didn't sing the national anthem. Corbyn doesn't dress in expensive Saville Row suits so he's unfit to be Prime Minister. Jeremy Corbyn's an IRA supporter (because he met members of Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists to appeal for a peaceful resolution to the conflict). Corbyn went to Morecambe. Corbyn is a Czech spy. Corbyn supporters are all Stalinists and Trotskyites. Let's focus on anti-Semitism in Labour all the time (when there are way more anti-Semites in the Tory ranks). Corbyn supported Hitler during WWII (even though he wasn't even born). Corbyn is a Russian stooge (even though the Tories are the ones raking in £millions from Russian oligarchs and Putin cronies). Corbyn muttered "stupid woman" (or was it "stupid people"? let's debate this for several days!)

The barrage of nonsense and smears is as endless as it is deliberate.

They'd much rather we expend our time and effort defending Corbyn, and Labour, and the left in general from this constant bombardment of gibberish, than spending it discussing and explaining Labour's policies.

And the concept of a cradle to grave National Education Service is one of the best Labour policies of all. Maybe let's talk about that for a while, rather than continually fixating on the latest faux outrage or manufactured smear?

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