Verdicts · Education
What the UK thinks about education
Settled referendums
29
since Jun 2026
Votes cast
4,664
all time, on education
This week
544
votes · 1 referendums settled
Written opinions
186
all time, left by voters
This week's opinion highlightThe most respected opinion this week
“I mean fundamentally, my answer is the opposite. Should SEND students get more funding and support? Absolutely. However, pouring billions into an unreformed SEND system is pouring water into a leaking bucket. Before asking taxpayers for more, government must fix the broken market where private providers and transport firms charge councils extortionate fees for basic placements. Throwing cash at sp”
BenL, debating No on “Should the government increase overall education spending to better support children with SEND?” · read the thread →
9
Respects
Most respected on education this week
- 1.BenL9 respects
- 2.Bigden405 respects
- 3.NorfolkCannon4 respects
- 4.Cameron11453 respects
- 5.Slawomir3 respects
Who answered this week
The 547 placed voters lean Centre Right overall.
H. Left5%
Left19%
C. Left8%
Centre8%
C. Right11%
Right40%
H. Right8%
Regions this week
South EastC. Right
ScotlandCentre
LondonC. Right
South WestC. Right
North WestC. Right
YorkshireCentre
East of EnglandC. Right
North EastC. Right
East MidlandsCentre
West MidlandsRight
WalesCentre
Northern IrelandCentre
Votes each week
544so far this week
42827 Jul
4813 Aug
90510 Aug
17 Aug
1,19924 Aug
54431 Aug
All-time education highlights
Biggest landslide
NO 84%
Should schools scrap hot meals and require all pupils to bring packed lunches?
84% of 148 votes went the same way.
Closest result
NO 51%
Should the government run an AI Tutoring Tools Pioneer Programme to co-design tools for disadvantaged pupils?
Decided by 1 vote.
Most debated
YES 65%
Does the UK have too many universities?
31 written opinions.
This week
1 settled · 544 votes
0% YES
Majority for
NO 46%
544 votes
0 skipped
by @Ian⏱ Ended 4 Sept 2026
Should the government increase overall education spending to better support children with SEND?
The verdict
The Yes side prevailed narrowly, but the room’s sharpest argument came from No: “pouring billions into an unreformed SEND system is pouring water into a leaking bucket.”
Last week
3 settled · 1,199 votes
0% NO
Majority against
YES 44%
440 votes
0 skipped
by @BenL⏱ Ended 28 Aug 2026
Should universal free school meals be provided to all primary and secondary pupils?
The verdict
A parental-responsibility case carried the room; the sharpest line was “Free means paid by me.”
0% YES
Majority for
NO 46%
381 votes
0 skipped
by @CDRook⏱ Ended 27 Aug 2026
Do GCSE qualifications need to be reworked to keep up with modern society and reduce student stress?
The verdict
Yes scraped a narrow win, but the floor’s best-rated arguments were No: one voice demanded “a core first”, while supporters made the case for a less “outdated testing treadmill” rather than a wholesale escape from standards.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 35%
378 votes
0 skipped
by @Slawomir⏱ Ended 26 Aug 2026
Does the UK have too many universities?
The verdict
“Keep the best & get rid of the rest” was the room’s bluntest prescription, and it carried the day: Yes won with a clear majority. The argument was less against learning than against a university system asked to do too much.
Every education verdict
- YES 54%Should the government increase overall education spending to better support children with SEND?The Yes side prevailed narrowly, but the room’s sharpest argument came from No: “pouring billions into an unreformed SEND system is pouring water into a leaking bucket.”
- NO 56%Should universal free school meals be provided to all primary and secondary pupils?A parental-responsibility case carried the room; the sharpest line was “Free means paid by me.”
- YES 54%Do GCSE qualifications need to be reworked to keep up with modern society and reduce student stress?Yes scraped a narrow win, but the floor’s best-rated arguments were No: one voice demanded “a core first”, while supporters made the case for a less “outdated testing treadmill” rather than a wholesale escape from standards.
- YES 65%Does the UK have too many universities?“Keep the best & get rid of the rest” was the room’s bluntest prescription, and it carried the day: Yes won with a clear majority. The argument was less against learning than against a university system asked to do too much.
- NO 75%Should the government reverse the levy on international student fees?University finance lost the argument to border anxiety: the floor’s sharpest No case called international students “regular visa overstayers”.
- NO 58%Should we stop SATs testing for Primary School children?Keeping SATs carried the day, but the room’s strongest reformers argued beyond abolition: “Education should be a joy never a chore”, while the winning side mostly defended the tests as a necessary check.
- NO 65%Should primary schools be required to identify children at risk of future unemployment?The fear of branding children lasted longer than the promise of rescuing them: “Go ahead and tell a child they would never get a job. They sure as hell wont then.” The screening plan was rejected.
- NO 66%Should the state fund religious schools?The room rejected state funding for religious schools by two to one, but its sharpest Yes argument was less about faith than about giving Ofsted “maximum power” over Islamic schools.
- YES 72%Are UK universities prioritising diversity over merit?A voter’s claim that universities were chasing “overseas fees rather than them prioritising diversity” was the floor’s most-respected counterpoint, even as Yes won decisively.
- YES 83%Should the UK end its target of sending half of school leavers to university?The winning side argued that university has become “a money making machine”, and it carried the vote by nearly five to one. No voter on the losing side left a case behind.
- NO 84%Should schools scrap hot meals and require all pupils to bring packed lunches?A near-total rout saw the floor reject scrapping hot school meals for packed lunches by more than four to one, leaving barely one in six voters willing to entertain the idea at all.
- YES 68%Should we reduce the number of university places by 20% of the 18-21 cohort and restore maintenance grants?Two in three voters here backed shrinking the university system and reviving maintenance grants, yet the debate's sharpest line came from the No camp, arguing the whole premise was too timid a fix for a system it called broken.
- YES 80%Should testing of primary school basics like spelling, punctuation, grammar, and numeracy be maintained?A chamber that skews firmly to the accountability side of the SATs argument backed keeping Key Stage 2 testing by four to one, even as its most respected dissenting voice warned that "you never made anything heavier by weighing it.
- YES 71%Should reading, writing and arithmetic take precedence over all other subjects in early years education?By seven in ten, the chamber backed a return to basics, deciding that reading, writing and arithmetic should trump the play-based ethos of the early years framework, even as the sharpest dissent warned against a "rather Dickensian approach.
- NO 75%Should the government increase tuition fees to make English universities financially sustainable?The instinct to fix higher education's finances by charging students more found almost no takers here, with voters rejecting a tuition fee rise by three to one even as they were told the sector's current model is collapsing.
- YES 63%Should student loans also be allowed to cover the cost of flight school?The chamber backed extending student finance to the cockpit, with almost two in three voters ready to let loans cover flight school, a verdict that reads less as generosity than as arithmetic about which degrees actually pay their own debt back.
- NO 70%Should faith schools receive state funding?What stands out is how comprehensively the chamber rejected the settlement that has underpinned English schooling for generations, with faith funding losing better than two to one across every age band on offer.
- YES 62%Should university tuition fees be abolished?The chamber backed scrapping fees altogether, but the coalition behind that verdict was not the one the debate usually assumes: it was the youngest voters and the pensioners who supplied the enthusiasm, while those in their late twenties, thirties and early forties — the ones still servicing their own loans — were the most evenly split of any group.
- YES 53%Should the government restrict individual needs-led SEND support with pre-determined tiers and packages?A chamber this evenly split on a question about tiers and packages ended up, fittingly, without much consensus at all — yes crept home by six points, on a coalition that thickened with age rather than settled ideology.
- YES 53%Should the UK prioritise R&D funding for its globally recognised universities over others?A near-even split on funding elite universities more heavily, carried by a narrow yes as the 55-64s backed concentration while the youngest and oldest voters resisted it most firmly.
Show all 29 verdicts ↓
- YES 55%Does the UK gain a net economic benefit from international higher education students?A narrow win for the economists' arithmetic: voters here backed the £40 billion case for international students by 55%, but the closeness suggests the ledger doesn't settle the argument.
- YES 63%Does the current student loan repayment system unfairly hold back career progression?The generation squeezed hardest by student debt was the least convinced it holds people back, while the near-unanimous sympathy came from those decades clear of it — the 65+ voters backing the "yes" verdict on the graduate tax by seven to one.
- NO 51%Should the government run an AI Tutoring Tools Pioneer Programme to co-design tools for disadvantaged pupils?A near dead-heat that hides a real fracture: the chamber split almost exactly down the middle on state-backed AI tutoring, but women broke for it while men turned firmly against, and parents' own age group, the 35-44s, delivered the most sceptical verdict of anyone.
- YES 62%Should schools and local authorities be required to follow this new statutory guidance to improve school attendance?Support for tougher attendance rules split less by age than by gender, with men backing the guidance comfortably while women voted narrowly against it, even as the middle-aged 45-54 bracket bucked every other cohort by rejecting it outright.
- YES 66%Should the government reverse the freeze on student loan repayment thresholds?Two to one, voters here sided with borrowers over the Treasury's ledger, reversing the freeze on repayment thresholds by a margin that held firm across almost every age group under 65.
- YES 68%Should higher education funding be shifted to prioritise vocational and apprenticeship routes?Yes carried 59 of 87 votes, but the headline hides a stark gender split: men backed the vocational shift three-to-one, women rejected it, 10 to 6.
- NO 55%Should apprenticeships replace traditional university degrees for higher education?A narrow defeat rather than a rout: No edged it 17-14, with the only large enough group to read, 25-34, split dead evenly down the middle.
- YES 62%Should teachers in England receive a 3.5% pay rise from September?A modest but clear win for the pay rise, 21-13, with the only real fracture running along age lines rather than gender.
- NO 58%Should the UK government fund two new university AI research labs with £60m?No won 18-13, a narrower defeat than the headline suggests, with the chamber's youngest cohort evenly split while those in their late 30s and 40s turned firmly against funding the £60m AI labs.