LSE’s Beveridge 2.0: Education and conquering the giant of ignorance

Erin Kelly

The Beveridge Report, officially entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services, is a government report, published in November 1942, and was influential in the founding of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. November 2017 marked the 75^th anniversary of the report where a cradle-to-grave social security plan was created in unified wartime spirit. As July 2018, will mark the 70^th anniversary of the NHS, the first tangible expression of Britain’s welfare state, the London School of Economics have decided to hold a festival to celebrate the ground-breaking report and question the future of the welfare state. Much of the ideas behind the welfare state were due to LSE’s director of 20 years, William Beveridge, however many other political activists in LSE contributed such as the report in 1959 by Dame Eileen Younghusband that led to establishing social work as a profession.

The Five Giants were identified by Beveridge as squalor, ignorance, want, idleness, and disease when he was proposing widespread reforms to the system of social welfare. Ignorance as one of the five giants was perhaps not given enough attention in the Beveridge Report and although the education act of 1944 led to progress there were gaps to be filled. Attending some of the Beveridge 2.0 events such as ‘Writing fiction to dramatise inequality’ and ‘Can literature solve poverty?’ focussed ideas about conquering the giant of ignorance by highlighting the equality of opportunity or lack thereof.  The education act, proposed by the conservatives and carried out by the labour government, was successful in making secondary education compulsory and providing meals and medical services at school. However, the system of examining children to decide on their placement in schools isolated children who failed the entrance exam as they were expected to get either skilled manual work or low skill menial jobs. This incentive paired with the focus on the primary sector of education meant that the secondary sector was neglected and that the UK developed a two-tiered educational system that produced inequality.

Fast-forward to today and education has advanced, with the school leaving age raised to 18 and preparation given to equip young people for modern day employment. Nonetheless, when considering higher education can we say that the ‘Giant of Ignorance’ has been conquered? The latest review of university fees reveals that fees will not be scrapped but frozen at £9,250 and will likely stay that way as we head into the year of the review. England’s tuition fees are currently higher than most countries around the world. The Conservatives current response to Labour’s new manifesto pledge of scrapping tuition fees is that it’s ‘unaffordable and regressive’, this demonstrates how the educational system of funding has caused new social divisions. The Institute for Fiscal Studies points out that students from poorer backgrounds will end up with £57,000 of debt whereas students from the richest 30% of households will have lower average borrowings of £43,000. Having this type of burden going into the workplace will perhaps affect employment rates and the number of skilled workers in this new knowledge economy. The main purpose of defeating the giant of ignorance is to provide more employment through education and these funding systems are perhaps hindering Beveridge’s vision.

Globalisation and technology have transformed our access to knowledge, maybe even enhancing our social and political awareness. However, there is a new form of ignorance emerging that Beveridge couldn’t have foreseen and that is ‘digital depravation’. The Ofcom figure for 2017 show that about 20% of adults in the UK do not have access to home broadband and when looking at the predictors for non-adoption of the internet it is clear there is a link to education and income. As we are moving towards an increasingly digitised system, both politically and socially, this means that many people don’t have access to important information. Ultimately, the giant of ignorance is yet to be conquered. We need to work to find new ways to create equal opportunities and offer high quality education early on that is accessible to all, meaning channelling resources more effectively and reviewing the structures in place that divide us.