Education, Education, Education (and immigration)
From More or Less by BBC Radio 4
June 10, 2026 · 29 min
About this episode
Tim Harford investigates various claims and statistics related to education and immigration in the latest episode.
Tim Harford investigates some of the numbers in the news. This week: (00:32) The internet is abuzz with the claim that twenty-seven young migrants are hired for every British young person. We explore the truth behind this misleading claim. (08:40) Last year two nerds made a bet on our programme. Those nerds are Substacker Sam Freedman and Maxwell Marlow from the Adam Smith Institute, and they were betting on how the government’s introduction of VAT on school fees would affect pupil numbers. The results are in… (16:10) We revisit the topic of Welsh literacy after a raft of questions from loyal listeners. Could dual-language teaching explain Wales’ poor reading scores? (21:53) A Maths A-Level exam was so hard it inspired 30,000 people to sign a petition. But what made it so difficult, and will it make a difference to pupils’ grades? More or Less is the programme that looks at numbers and statistics in news and in life. We’re always looking for questions from listeners - you can contact us on moreorless@bbc.co.uk. Guests: Maxwell Marlow - Director of Public Affairs at the Adam Smith Institute Sam Freedman - Author of ‘Comment is Freed’ Substack John Jerrim - Professor of Education…
People in this episode
Host: Tim Harford
Guests: Maxwell Marlow, Sam Freedman
Topics covered
- immigration
- education
- literacy
- maths
- statistics
- government policy
Keywords
- migrants
- school fees
- Welsh literacy
- A-Level exam
- reading scores
- VAT
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Adam Smith Institute, Substack, University College, London
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