This chapter covers four educational measures which may potentially have a huge bearing on young people and their futures: life skills, apprenticeshipshigher education and class size reduction. The best predictor of an adult’s life satisfaction is their emotional health at 16 – not their qualifications. Which school they go to is a key factor in this – schools affect emotional health as much (in terms of explained variance) as they affect academic performance. Teaching life skills in an evidence-based way can have a positive impact on pupils’ emotional health. ‘Healthy Minds’ is a weekly curriculum for ages 11–15. In an RCT, this raised life satisfaction by 0.36 points (out of 10) with a BCR of 27:1.

After school, a key issue is what training a young person gets. For those not wanting full-time university education, earning while learning via apprenticeship is the obvious route. In Britain, such apprenticeships are in short supply – only one in three applicants finds a place. However, in our evaluation we found apprenticeships to be so effective in raising income and employment that they repay the state’s expenditure within seventeen years (including discounting). The comparable period for higher education is twenty-nine years.

Finally, we look at class size – a policy with an extremely low BCR. Marginal reduction in class size is both costly and has negligible positive impact on children’s wellbeing and attainment.