Mark Woods: Twenty must be plenty in tomorrow’s classrooms

First we had the Cleggian announcement that from next year all infants in England will be given free school meals.

Then it was Ed Milliband’s turn to strike a utilitarian pose and propose, should he get the power to make it happen, an extension to the free childcare available to working parents of three-and four-year-olds. The plan would be to increase the allowance from the current level of 15 hours a week to 25 hours.

It is of course easy, tempting even, to see both of these policies as gimmicks designed to light up the conference season firmament.

But they are more than that. If they should come to pass, a big if where political promises are concerned obviously, they have the potential to be the beginnings of a shift in the value we put on pre-emptive investment as opposed to spending our collective cash on ever bigger mops to clear up the mess with.

While New Labour’s Education, Education, Education rally cry a decade or more ago certainly improved the state of the nation’s crumbling primary schools, a combination of factors meant that it didn’t go anywhere near far enough.

There was, inevitably, some evidence of the myopic short-termism which can often accompany announcements of the sort we’ve seen these past few days – why do parents get all the help, what about the rest of us? But it seems like the concept that in time we will all of us benefit from ploughing our resources into preparing our young as best we can for life, rather than picking up the gargantuan health and social costs of not doing so when they reach adulthood, is really beginning to take hold.

As the respective policy- making teams cluster together in their break out areas to dream up the next raft of ideas, hoping beyond hope to avoid slipping into the Partridgesque territory of Inner City Sumo Academies and monkey tennis for all, there is one measure, one move that would at a stroke transform our education system and no doubt save us countless of trillions of pounds down the line.

It’ll cost, mind you, it’ll need huge investment, commitment and long term backing, but it’s guaranteed to work because for the few who give their children a private education it is the single factor they pay their money for above all else.

If a pledge were to be made that in a decade there wouldn’t be a single class in the UK with more than 20 children in it, you’d be hard pushed to find a parent in the land who wouldn’t be prepared to put their hand 
in their pocket to help achieve it.

Twitter @mark_r_woods