The Cuts

Abstract

That there is no defence for the educational cuts announced in January is evident from what Ministers say about them. Education must be cut because every sector of Government expenditure is being cut, regardless of importance. Mr Gordon Walker keeps saying that there are no cuts — just a “slowing up in the planned rate of growth”. But the children who entered secondary schools this academic year would have had a compulsory school life lasting until 16. Now it is 15. Is that not a cut ? When challenged about the peculiar idiocy of not raising the age Ministers have no answer but to ask for other suggestions. They even claim that picking on the leaving age avoids cuts elsewhere when, as we shall see, it actually causes them. The cuts in education, like the rest of the “package”, rest on no principle or consistency. They are the antithesis of planning, conceived in haste and announced in muddle.

Citation

Burgess, T. (1968), "The Cuts", Education + Training, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 106-109. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb015940