Category Archives: Infographics

The Corporate Takeover of Education? Pearson’s Rapidly Expanding Control of UK Qualifications

Amidst the other aspects of the privatisation of education (Marketisation, Academies, Free Schools, Apprenticeships, Tuition Fees etc.) you may have missed this aspect!

Pearson PLC is a FTSE 100 company worth nearly £10 billion with sales of £4.9 billion and a £720 million profit in 2014, whose best-known subsidiary is Britain’s largest exam board, Edexcel, which generates a a profit of £60 million a year.

Over the last five years Pearson PLC has aggressively expanded its control of Britain’s qualifications and assessment market.

Between 2008/09 and 2012/13 its share of the GCSE market increased from 21% to 30%

Pearsons GCSE

 

Its share of ‘other qualifications’ has increased from 5% to 28%

Pearsons other table

Pearsons other

However, Pearson’s share of the smaller A level market decreased slightly from 25% to 23%.

Pearsons A level

Despite the shrinking in the A level market, taken together this means that Pearson PLC now sets the examination standards for almost 30% of qualifications undertaken in England, Wales and Northern Ireland (1).

NB – There is more expansion planned! In its 2014 annual report Pearson PLC clearly states a desire to further expand its role in the UK education further, by getting more involved in such areas as the development of blended and virtual schools (e.g. Connections Education); and schools improvement programmes (e.g. through the Pearson’s School Model), and the use of ICT is central to all of this (2), although to date progress in these other areas seems to have not been as rapid as with its takeover of the qualifications market.

(1)http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20141031163546/http://ofqual.gov.uk/standards/statistics/annual-qualification-market-report-england-wales-northern-ireland/

(2)https://www.pearson.com/ar2014.html

The Gender Pay Gap – A Brief Analysis

This chart shows what most of us would regard as a generally positive trend – the decline in the gender pay gap – which is down to 9% for full-time workers, and even lower for part-time workers.

Gender Pay Gap 1 2014

However, there’s a lot more going on than this….

For starters, there is considerable variation by age – with women in their 20s and 30s actually earning more than men in the same age categories, with  a significant pay gap then emerging between older workers.

Gender Pay Gap by Age

The ONS notes that the gender pay gap between workers 40+ is probably down to women taking time off to become primary child carers, which to my mind is pretty bleak – Given the ‘negative’ gender pay gap between younger workers, this suggests women are getting into jobs which will give them the same (or better) wages than men (reflecting their higher educational achievement) but that this is then abruptly reversed when childcare responsibilities fall on the mother rather than the father.

It also seems that women in higher paid jobs lose out more compared to men in lower paid jobs – with the gender pay gap for the highest 10% of earners being near 20%, while it’s nearer 5% for the lowest 10% of earners (so rich women are less equal to rich men than poor women are to poor men, at least if we look purely at income). Of course this will also reflects the gendered age differences in the chart above.

Employment - gender pay gap

However to complicate matters there’s not a straightforward correlation between occupational class and the gender pay gap – it’s actually the traditionally masculine jobs which have the highest gender pay gap, not the highest income ‘professional and managerial’ jobs.

 gender pay gap occupation

There’s various explanations for this larger gender pay gap in traditionally male occupations – It could simply be the later entry of women into such occupations compared to women going into the professions – thus there are fewer older women than older men, so women on average earn less compared to men because older workers earn more than younger. An alternative explanation would be that women who go into these professions are less likely to return them after taking time out to raise children, in which case the question of whether this lack of return is due to gender-barriers, or genuine free-choice would arise. Of course, it’s probably a mixture of all three of these reasons.

Finally, it might be worth exploring what’s going in in Northern Ireland that’s led to such a significant reduction in the gender pay gap….. Whether this is down to social policy or just societal changes I don’t know, drop me a line if you do!

Employment - gender pay gap 1997 to 2014

 

The truancy map of England and Wales (infographics evaluation)

A new blog-theme I’m getting into  – A critical look at infographics – Mostly going to focus on education for the coming months…

In 2012 Simon Rogers from The Guardian put together this Interactive truancy map of England and Wales which was constructed by ‘mashing together’ two data sets from the Department for Education: truancy figures and numbers of penalty notices issued to parents and carers.

Truancy in England map

(NB – The still doesn’t do it justice, click on the links above to get the full utility)

 What I like about this infographic

  • It’s representative – It appears to show data from all 152 LEAs in England and all 32 in wales.

  • The Trauncy data is clearly labelled – Total percent of persistent absentees 2010/11

  • It’s very easy to compare across LEAs – given that we are given the percentages and these are clearly colour coded.

  • You get a lot more detail when you hover over each area, including the option to download the data as a fusion table.

What could be improved

  • I’m not sure when the data for penalty notices was collected

  • The graphic doesn’t allow you to see changes in truancy rates over time.

  • The infograph doesn’t allow you to easily see if there is a correlation between penalty notices issued and truancy rates, and in any case, IF the years are the same this would probably be conincidental anway.

  • The infograph begs you to do more with slighlty different data to explore the above relationship – what you would need to do this is to include truancy data from previous years (or now later years) and show the percentage change year on year, and then compare this to the number of and type of penalty notices issued over time. Of course this alone wouldn’t allow you to attribute anything like causation.

  • It would also be informative to be able to compare these truancy rates to other local variables – the most obvious one being deprivation (FSM) indicators.

Increasing Life Expectancy – It’s far from certain!

According to this eye-catching infographic from the Office for National Statistics  1/3rd of babies born in 2013 are expected to reach 100 years of age, meaning that there will be well over 100,000 centanarians alive in the UK in 2113, which is more than 6 times the estimated 14000 alive today.

According to this scenario, the expected averarage national life-expectancy is projected to be 90.7 for men and 94.0 for women, a ten year increase compared to current (2010-12) life exptencies which are 81.7 and 82.7 years respectively.

The government has used these data (unsurprising giving that this is the ONS) to justify the rising of the state pension age, given that according to these projections people will, on average spend a third of their life in receipt of a state pension, as evidenced below (full document here)

survivingtoage100infograhic_tcm77-345385

However, this future is far from certain, and such an increase depends on a number of underlying social developments taking place – such as a reduction in the number of people smoking, an increase in medical interventions to prevent deaths from heart disease, stroke and cancer, and healthier diets and lifestyles. It is also the case that a number of other factors may serve to reduce future life-expectancy – such as the increasing cost of living in real terms driving up the number of people in poverty and the increase in inequality causing more status anxiety.

In fact if you read down the infographic, this lack of certainty is recognised as the initial figures are only the ‘principal projections’ but the low and high estimates for the number of babies born today likely to reach 100 varies from as low as 16K to as high as 259K for men and as low as 31K and as high as 271K for women.

To my mind, the real story in this data is actually the very high level of uncertainty surrounding projections in the ageing population, and the difficulties society faces planning for the future in the light of such uncertainties.

It’s unfortunate that the infographic or the government fail to highlight this, but instead focuses on the principal data in order to tell a story that might (but only might) happen.

Then again, I guess this particular manifestation of uncertainty doesn’t suit the present government’s ideological war against the public sector, whereas the message that we are all living longer serves as a plausible justification for raising the pension age and reducing the overall public sector commitment to ‘caring’ for people in their old age. It is also, of course, another effective means of punishing the poor, because the poorer you are then the earlier you die.

Related posts

http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/9556/labour-markets/increase-state-pension-age/

http://www.beyondcurrenthorizons.org.uk/review-of-longevity-trends-to-2025-and-beyond/

http://www.longevitypanel.co.uk/docs/life-expectancy-by-gender.pdf

This is a nice series of infographics from the ONS focussing on current (2010-12 figures Life Expectancy among people aged 65+, looking at such things as the very signficant gender divide that persists into the 80 and 90 years age brackets.

Some ‘nice’ infographics on inequality in the UK…

Wealth Distribution

It’s a bit dated already, but I guess these things take a bit of time to put together – A video outlining wealth distribution in 2008/10. One of the stand-out statistics is that to be that in the bottom 10% of households, the HH had to have wealth of less than £13000, whereas to be in the top 10%, the HH needed wealth greater than £967 000. Or…

Top 10% of households –       Minimum Wealth = £967, 000

Bottom 10% of households – Maximum Wealth = £13, 000.

So the poorest household in the richest 10% is at least 74 times richer than the richest household in the bottom 10%.

(Quick aside – From an extreme early retirement perspective, £967,000 is about three times what you need to retire on, so not one of those households needs to be working, although some will be because of unnecessary consumption addiction syndrome).

 

Inequality has actually increased since this video – In 2010 the wealthiest 20% of the UK were 92 times wealthier than the poorest 20%, in 2012 they were 105 times wealthier.

WEALTH3

 

Life Expectancy

Richmond upon Thames had the highest healthy life expectancy (HLE) for both males (70.3 years) and females (72.1 years). The lowest HLE was in Manchester for males at 55.0 years and Tower Hamlets for females at 54.1 year

health2

 

Education

There’s no pretty picture for this one, but there is a nice interactive infographic here (courtesy of learning plus)

The short story is that, nationally, while there has been an overall improvement in the GCSE 5 A*-C pass rate, there has been an increase in both the FSM (Free school meal) gap and the CLA (children looked after) gap between 2012-13, so those from disadvantaged backgrounds have fallen further behind those from more advantaged backgrounds.

The site notes… ‘Nationally we see an increase in the percentage of pupils eligible for pupil premium achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs including English and mathematics between 2011 and 2013. At the same time the gap in the achievement of this threshold measure has widened between 2012 and 2013, reflecting a greater increase in the achievement of other pupils. The percentage of CLA pupils achieving 5+ A*-C GCSEs including English and mathematics increased by just 0.3% between 2012 and 2013 while among all other pupils this rose by 1.8%, widening the performance gap to 45.9%. Among FSM eligible pupils there was an increase of 1.8% achieving this threshold measure in 2013 than in 2012; similarly there was an increase of 2% for all other pupils, increasing the gap to 26.7%’

On the plus side, there is evidence that London is successfully closing this education gap.

In summary – CLASS INEQUALITY IS STILL RIFE IN MODERN BRITAIN!

Increasing income inequality in the UK

I thought this infographic showing income inequality was worth sharing (From the Equality Trust) –

income-inequality-uk-2

Unfortunately (if you think income inequality is bad!) things have got even worse since 2012!

Britain’s top executives are now paid around 130 times their average employee, according to analysis released today by the High Pay Centre think-tank. 

Income inequality has got a LOT WORSE in recent decades. In 1998, the average FTSE 100 CEO was paid 47 times their average employee, which means that while average incomes have stagnated in relation to the cost of living, the incomes of the very richest have almost trebled in 15 years.

The video below illustrates this in stark terms by comparing the typical wage of a nurse with that of a typical CEO, the headline figures being as follows:

  • A CEO earns as much in 3 days as a nurse does in a year.

  • A CEO earns more in a year than a nurse will earn in her entire life.

  • If we redistributed the income of the top 1%, then on average each household in the UK would be better off by £3K a year.

 Related questions you might like to think about include….

1. Why does such income inequality exist?

2. Is this fair? (are CEOs worth 130 times more than their average employee?)

3. Is income inequality good or bad for society?

4. If you’ve answered ‘no’, and ‘bad’ to questions 2 and 3, can anything be done about increasing income inequality?

The World Wealth Report 2013

 

The World Wealth Report reports on trends in the wealth of HNWIs – Or High Net Wealth Individuals. These are individuals with $1million or more in investable assets. You have to sign up to be able to download the report, but its free. (Thankyee for the crust kind sirs, doffs cap…) 

Between 2011-12, the richest 12 million people in the world gained an extra 4.2 trillion dollars of wealth between them – Their total wealth is now $46.2 billion, up from $42 billion in 2011. Thats a tidy $350 000 each extra on average, and according to the predictions below that trend is set to continue…

wealth1

Of course it gets bleaker… the averages above disguise the fact that the richest Ultra High Net Wealth Individuals increased their overal wealth more than the mere ‘millionnaires next door’… the proportional increases may well be the same, but of course a 10% gain on $50 million means you gain more than if you’d gained 10% on a mere $1 million.

wealth4

 

And bleaker… The richest 12 million may have got 10% richer on average, but this is on the back of a mere 2.2% GDP growth rate, so their wealth is growing nearly five times the rate of real global wealth (although somehow I’m sure that’s not a fair comparison?!)

wealth5

 

And even bleaker… according to the World Bank’s GNI data (not the same as wealth I know) –  GNI only increased from around 70 to 71.4 trillion dollars, which is less than 1%, so most of this wealth increse doesn’t seem to be rooted in the production of tangible goods and services.

No doubt there are different ways of interpreting what this data actually means, comments welcome!

 

In case you prefer a word-based summary – the 2013 report notes the following…

  • Between 2011 to 2012 The world’s HNWI population increased by 9.2% to reach 12.0 million, after remaining flat in 2011.
  • In the same period, The aggregate investable wealth increased 10.0% to US$46.2 trillion, after declining slightly in 2011.
  • ƒHNWI wealth in 2012 represented a new level of strength, going well past the historical high of US$42.7 trillion set in 2010.
  • Relatively stronger growth rates in higher wealth bands4 (US$5 million or more) led the growth of overall investable wealth globally.
  • All of this is despite a decline in the rate of world GDP growth to 2.2% last year.

 

 

China and Russia – Among the world’s worst human rights abusers

China and Russia have both been moved to the bottom tier of the U.S. human trafficking rank, joining the likes of North Korea, Sudan, and Zimbabwe, according to a recent U.S. State department report.

20130622-190731.jpg

In China, the one-child policy and a cultural preference for male children perpetuates the trafficking of brides and prostitutes. Chinese sex trafficking victims have been reported on all of the inhabited continents. Traffickers recruit girls and young women, often from rural areas of China, using a combination of fraudulent job offers, imposition of large travel fees, and threats of physical or financial harm, to obtain and maintain their service in prostitution.

Forced labour is also widely practised in China, in which both internal and external migrants are conscripted to work in coal mines or factories without pay, as well as its continued use of re-education hard labor camps for political dissidents.

In Russia, there are estimates that 50,000 children are involved in involuntary prostitution and about one million people are thought to be exposed to exploitive labor conditions, including extremely poor living conditions, the withholding for documents, and nonpayment for services.

Human Rights Watch has pointed out that some of Russia’s labour abuses have occurred during the preparations for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, with some workers enduring “12-hour shifts with one day off per month, having their passports confiscated, being denied employment contracts, and facing unsanitary and overcrowded employer-provided accommodations, with up to 200 migrant workers living in a one single-family home.”

While the nature and scale of such absuses isn’t on a scale with what’s going in Syria, these two nations are not ‘rogue states’, they make up half of the BRIC nations. Given their status as rapidly growing and globoalising economic superpowers, combined with the size of their populations, the potential for further human rights abuses in these two nations profound.

It would be nice to think that this lower designation results in the U.S. imposing sanctions on these contries countries, such as voting against any IMF or World Bank loans. However, given the historical record of the U.S. tolerating and even supporting governments who champion capital over human rights, I don’t think sanctions are likely anytime soon.

Putting DRC Poverty in context (2)

My first ever infographic!

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Not perfect I know, and maybe a bit tedious in terms of the ‘same old theme’ again, but I’m pretty pleased for a first effort…

Disclaimer – The relative sizes might be a bit skewed, I square rooted the relative numbers and then ‘tweaked’ so they looked about right. Anyways, it’s just a first effort, defo more to come. Hopefully one day I can figure out a way to get paid to knock (much more professional versions) of these up.

I made it in inkscape  – Pretty easy to get the basics, even for a total novice like me!