Public finance

Last week the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, suggested a graduate tax as a 'fairer' replacement for tuition fees in higher education. All the Labour leadership candidates - with the exception of David Miliband - have expressed support for this idea, as has the National Union of Students; the leading universities, meanwhile, have opposed it. This Observation examines whether the rationale for such a policy and the practical implications of it have been fully considered.

These slides were presented at a Westminster Education Forum Keynote Seminar: 'Building school for the future - next steps'.

As part of an international collaboration funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the Australian Research Council, researchers at the IFS and the Australian National University have sought to compare the nature of private schooling in both Australia and the UK.

The coalition government has announced ambitious plans for a new generation of schools inspired by the Swedish model of "free schools." Creating these new schools will clearly involve a capital cost. However, capital spending is likely to be significantly cut across most departments over the next four years, education included. Unless the new schools programme is to be very modest, plans for overall capital spending will need to be revised upwards or the cuts to investment spending elsewhere will be extremely deep.

On the face of it, there appears to be much agreement between the three main UK parties on education policy: they all propose the creation of new schools or academies, and all plan to introduce a 'pupil premium' that is intended to provide more funds to schools with disadvantaged pupils. On closer examination, however, this apparent consensus fades away - there are real and significant differences between the parties' approaches to the education system.

A project for Universities UK.

This presentation was given at the launch of the 2010 Green Budget.

This presentation was delivered as evidence by IFS at the first public hearing of the Independent Review of Higher Education Funding and Student Finance, chaired by Lord Browne.

These slides were presented at an Inside Government seminar, 'The Future of Schools: Funding, Free Schools and the Academies Programme'.

This public economics lecture was delivered at Oxford and Cambridge Universities in November 2009.