If a child has not completed its first year in primary school satisfactorily, then it will not be in a position to take on board the more advanced teaching on offer in the second year. Clearly if it has not coped with year 1 work, he/she will flounder and be lost for every if moved up to year 2.
So we have a duty, not to punish this child for failing, far from it, but to help that child, and give it another go by starting again. There is no logic whatsoever in moving a child up to a level where it is doomed to fail.
This logic applies not only to years 1 and 2, but to all stages of education.
So CSSP policy will be that children move up when they are ready, and not before. The school leaving age of 16 will be scrapped, and young people will stay in school until they are finished, no matter how long it takes.
Currently we have young people in schools who are able, but who are not applying themselves, just waiting for the day when they can leave school. With this policy, they will be motivated to apply themselves, even if just so that they can leave school.
Of course, there will be young people who will not attend school regardless of our plans. If they are able to find a job, then it would be churlish of us to do anything other than wish them well. However, if they want to leave school before they are finished, and cannot get a job, then they needn’t come looking to society for benefits and so forth.
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Who benefits from young people graduating from Universities?
Society gains by having talented people having been well-educated, who help us all either directly or indirectly. This is so self-evident that we shall not expand on that here.
The student also gains as he/she is better placed to make a good living.
So both society and the individual gain. Someone must pay? It is only fair that both should contribute. But how? Society through taxation. And the student by loan, repaid by taxation.
The student will be eligible for a Citizen's Loan. This is charged interest at the rate of inflation, so it never grows in real terms. In real terms, it is an interest-free loan. It is repaid only when the student starts to earn above a threshold, indicating that he/she is now doing rather well, thank-you, and should be in a position to make those payments.
If the student never gets a well-paid job, no payments are made, and at retirement age, the debt is wiped.
We deliberately used the term student rather than graduate to cover the possibilities that a student may have a large income while still an undergraduate, or that he/she does not qualify but still goes on to make a success of life.