So on that basis, it, it would be reasonable to assume, then, that governments funded education more, then they would be able to achieve more economically and in terms of social control. So is that why governments puts funds into education. >> It is, it is. And there is clearly an imperative towards funding as a way of generating a particular kind of education system in, in terms of quality, in terms of infrastructure, in terms of the teaching force. But in recent years the idea that there's a clear and simple relationship between the level of funding and the level of educational output, or performance, or quality, has, has been challenged in various ways. I mean there are a set of arguments which make the point, or try to make the point that the more educated your population is, then the more prosperous your country is likely to be. And that is, that has become a kind of mantra. Particularly within the European Union, and there are set of research center, observatories in the European Union which have been working to kind of establish the basis of this relationship. Although in practice, that relationship is not as clear cut as it may appear in some ways. And if, if you look at the recent economic procession, clearly there are intervening variable between, educational and founding an educational performance and economic performance. So, the, the, the, the general performance of the economy can interrupt that relationship. It's not a simple straight forward relationship. Alongside that, though, there, there has been an increasing set of critique of the idea that the more money you put into education, the more that you get out of it. And, an argument has been brought into play that, that funding can be used in a more strategic way to drive up quality and performance though, rather than looking at overall levels of performance, simply pumping in money to the system. But if that money is used strategically, that, that you can, you can get more out of the system perhaps with less money. And I suppose there are two clear examples of that. One is performance related pay for teachers. And, and the other is a form, a former performance re, related funding for schools. So that you fund schools on the basis either of their performance or their recruitment of students within a kind of market, economy of schooling. And the idea there is that you target funding towards those institutions and those practitioners who are evidently most effective in terms of driving up quality and performance and, and standards. So while, while there are, there are still figures that you can look at, the OECD produced figures which compares the percentage of GDP that any, any a particular country devotes to to education. And that's used to some extent as a sort of political moral stick to beat certain countries in terms of their low levels, of, of of funding. There's now a set of arguments which interrupt this very simple relationship between more funding and, and more, more or better education. So is there any evidence then that a good education system can make a country more prosperous? >> There is, there is some evidence which, which suggest that there is a relationship and there are a lot of money and a lot of research that's devoted to trying to demonstrate that relationship Particularly in the European Union there's a lot of effort to put to that. But it's not as simple as that. There isn't a simple, direct, one to one relationship between how much money you put in your education system and how prosperous your economy is on the other end. All sorts of other things come into play, for example, in relation to your, your, your particular nation's, economic position in relation to its, its competitors, or your particular, industrial and, and economic history. For example we've seen in, in the West, in the last 30 or 40 years. That the decline of a whole sets of manufacturing industries. Basic industrial production of, which have exported in some ways too, to, to other places, to, to to Asian and, and now places like Brazil and, and Russia and China. And filling that gap or, or rebuilding the economy on a different basis is related to education to some extent. But, but education is, is not the single driver for that. There are all sorts of other political. And economic and financial factors that, that are coming to play. So we're asked there are some commentators who argue that, that the, the, the overall level of, of quality within the population. No, the overall level of qualifications of the population will have some impact upon prosperity, that always has to be related to, to other factors, to other things. And you’ve seen some economies which have, in some ways, had to reinvent themselves entirely to find a new kind of relationship between education and economic output, I suppose the best example in some sense is what set would be Singapore. Very small country, very, minimal industrial base, and it's, it's recreated itself as sort of a hump for education in Southeast Asia has an enormously complex edu, educational infrastructure. But, in part, that is then turned into attract students into Singapore from other countries. So one, one of the other factors now one has to think about, in terms of the relationship between education and the economy, is not this kind of service relationship, but also a direct economic relationship in terms of foreign currency earning. So in the UK education is, is a major export industry it earns a lot of money for the UK economy. >> So in that sense education becomes an industry as well as actually something that's related to the, the population. Absolutely, yes it becomes productive in its own right and as I say it generates, foreign currency, and it generates profits, for, for providers, and we're seeing increasingly, a interest. On the part of capital for profit providers in the delivery of educational services both nationally and internationally.
