We fund schools on the number of diplomas they produce. So they produce diplomas. Not necessarily educated people. This is no cruelty on the teachers' part — most of them do their best — it is a built-in incentive that automatically translates into lower standards, easier examinations and ever more "learning pathways" for those who are not really suited to the level.
The problem in one sentence
Measure schools by the number of passes, and you get passes. Measure them by educated people, and you get educated people.
What I propose
Outcome-based funding, not headcount funding. The average final examination grade becomes the determining factor, not the pass rate. A school that passes a hundred pupils with a bare 6 receives less than a school that delivers fifty with an 8. The incentive changes immediately: schools want pupils who can perform, and pupils have reason to perform again.
Stricter admission. Schools may once more choose whom they admit. Not to exclude, but to bring motivation and talent together. A grammar school for those who can genuinely think in the abstract. A vocational school for those with a love of craft. And above all: an honest mirror for those who do not belong somewhere, rather than false hope until the diploma proves beyond reach.
Risk returned to childhood. Children playing freely outdoors learn more about rules, responsibility and consequences than in any classroom. A child who has never fallen from a tree learns too late what gravity is. A child who has never argued without adult intervention learns too late about conflict and reconciliation.
My proposal: stop using public money for childcare and nursery education in the first seven to ten years. Redirect that budget towards home parenting support: a tax-free allowance for the parent who chooses to be with the child, plus access to parenting coaching and networks. This is not an attack on working parents — it is returning a choice that has been made economically impossible.
Craftsmen back in honour. An outstanding plumber delivers more social value than a mediocre public administrator. Yet the former is treated as a residual item and the latter as the ideal. That is a cultural illness that begins with parents wishing their child "something in an office", and ends with a country unable to find tradespeople for the energy transition.
Why this aligns with the 7D framework
Education scales poorly (G-dimension): what works in a class of fifteen fails in a class of thirty. This is not an administrative problem; it is a law of nature. A teacher can give meaningful attention to a limited number of people at once; beyond that threshold the quality per pupil falls inexorably.
Education carries a high W-value that cannot be expressed in money — a good teacher changes a life, and that change finds expression in prosperity or wellbeing only decades later. Policy driven solely by short-term money cannot see that W-value and slowly dismantles the system.
And education requires N-multiplicity: different schools, different methods, no monoculture. One ministerial curriculum directing all schools to do the same thing is a levelling machine. Freedom for schools to be different produces pupils who are different — which is what a country needs.
The counter-argument
People will say: this is elitist, you are excluding children. My answer is that an honest mirror is the opposite of exclusion. Whoever earns a diploma now that means little will later be excluded anyway — in the labour market, in a course they cannot manage, in a life that does not fit. That is crueller than saying in good time: this is not your path, look over here.
Education is not a social security system. It is an instrument for enabling people to become themselves. That only works with honest measures.