Achievement... Happiness... Tragedy... Stress...
A weekly programme which focuses on people and the situations which shape their live:
Reporters: Jim Douglas Henry, Jeremy James, Jeanne La Chard, Gillian Strickland, Desmond Wilcox, Harold Williamson
This week:The State of Education
In 1945 Britain was investing £150 million a year in education. By 1968 the sum was £2,000 million. Every tax-payer can feel proud of his share in this rise in the education budget. But not every voter is aware of the appallingly low standard of education that prevailed in 1945. Nor is it widely known that today six children in ten leave school without an O-level and that to reduce classes in Primary Schools to forty and in Secondary Schools to thirty we lack 42,000 trained teachers - now.
Every child in Primary and Secondary School has a chance - sometimes it's an outside chance - of getting an education. It is only one chance in a lifetime.
The present year, 1969, will be remembered as the year of the cuts; when for the first time in a quarter of a century, critics say, the government budgeted for a decline in educational standards - in a time of growing population in schools, colleges, and universities.
This week Man Alive examines the arguments for and against the educational cuts with the Secretary of State for Education and Science, Edward Short - and those who seek to question the wisdom of the government policies.
(Colour)