£30.5 billion spent on primary and secondary schools every year According to the Department for Education, expenditure on education services by central and local government in the UK in 2002-03 was £30.5 billion on primary and secondary schools, or about £4,500 expenditure for each student in primary and secondary education every year.
Over £3 billion spent on special needs every year in primary and secondary schools Just over 10% of the £30.5 billion primary and secondary education budget is spent on special needs, so the special needs budget is about £3 billion every year. A large percentage of this is spent on dyslexia and related special needs.
30% of annual budget (worth £1bn) freed up in special needs These figures are very interesting, given that an initial seven year study after introducing
Davis Learning Strategies (DLS) in seven Californian schools showed that referrals for special needs were practically eliminated. There was not a single special needs referral in any of the schools for seven years. We don’t claim to be able to reproduce that success, but we do believe that a third of that should be reasonable, which would free up 30% in special needs costs.
Total cost of saving £1bn is £0.1bn The average cost of introducing
Davis Learning Strategies in a primary school is about £8,000, or the same as one year’s total education budget for one student. This amounts to a total cost of about £150 million - one off - to introduce DLS in each and every primary school in the UK.
Total annual education budget in the UK is just over £50 billion Total expenditure on education services by central and local government in the UK in 2002-03 was £53.8 billion for education up to and including higher education. This amount was split into £35.2 billion spent by local education authorities and £18.6 billion spent by central government.
Potential saving in education as a whole: Almost £2bn every year If DLS is introduced at a primary level, we can expect that in 15 years these children will have filtered up the whole education system, right through to higher education. At that time we can hope to be saving up to 3% of the £53.8 billion for education, up to and including higher education. This amounts to almost £2 billion that we can free up every year in our total education budget. This amount could for example be used to improve provision for more severely disabled students. It is worth noting that this figure does not account for the potential savings of schools as a result of improved work environment in the classroom, but reports from teachers that are using our methods show that work satisfaction is improved and they are less prone to burn-out.
Further savings in social services, policing, and the criminal justice system This is very exciting, but we haven´t even begun to look at a figure which
The Dyslexia Institute estimates to be around £1 billion, and we deem to be a very conservative estimate. This is the cost to society when young people drop out of education and sign up for unemployment benefits or get tempted by a life of crime which can offer instant short-term gratification for a person with broken self-esteem and a poor sense of consequence. A recent study commissioned by the
British Dyslexia Association showed the percentage of dyslexics among young offenders to be almost 60%. This study mentioned a larger study - also commissioned by the BDA - where the early indications are considerably higher, or close to 80% dyslexics among offenders. American studies show as high as 90% of offenders having learning difficulties.
The Davis methods address criminal behaviour The Davis methods have been shown to successfully address the issue which often is at the root of anti-social behaviour - a diminished sense and
understanding of consequence. This issue is at the root of denial, which again is a key component in
addictive behaviour and
crime - when we do not realise how our behaviour affects our own prospects and other people´s lives.
Innovation and productivity likely to rise These are the potential savings as a result of introducing DLS, but that is just one side of the coin. The previously mentioned study in the seven schools in California showed that the average for gifted students rose by 100%-800%. This is probably an indication that the picture thinkers manage to harness their gift when the teaching methods cater for their needs, but this probably also indicates that
Davis Learning Strategies enhance learning for
every single student in the classroom. As a result of a nationwide introduction of DLS we can expect to see a significant rise in innovation, productivity and growth, which could well amount to a considerably more value than the savings of almost £2bn mentioned above.
Our opinion is that DLS is an initiative that no school, local or central government can afford to ignore.
