Ielts writing Essentials (book 2)

TOPIC NO. 20
SHOULD EDUCATION BE FREE?
You should spend about 40 minutes on this task.
All education, primary, secondary and further education, should be free to all people and
paid for by the government. Do you agree or disagree with this statement?
You should write at least 250 words.
The opinion that every citizen should have the right to study at school or university for free is
a very controversial one. Those, who disagree, refer to the enormous expenditures of the
government in case of establishing such laws. Although, I hold the viewpoint that not
charging people for education could become very beneficial for the country and its economy.
Firstly, young people from poor families could be very smart. Looking back to history and
biographies of distinguished people, raised in poverty can illustrate this best. Making
schooling available only for fortunate is not fair. Moreover, the state well-being could also be
affected, because there would be a lack of talented specialists, whose skills were not
discovered and developed by proper training.
Another advantage of making education free of charge is happiness of the nation. Inability of
individuals to collect the required amount of money needed to pay school or university fees
causes stress and anxiety of the middle-class society, which can even keep them from having
children. Nowadays, we can see that the lowest birthrate is in countries where prices of
enrollment to higher education institutions are very high. This clearly indicates the fact that
citizens of rich countries are generally not able to provide their future offsprings proper
education.
Finally, nothing seems to be more beneficial to economy than an intelligent nation. Free
courses and study programs can prepare excellent specialists, who would work to bring profit
themselves and hence their respective countries. That would surely compensate most expenses
of the state budget caused by education of no charge.
To sum up, even though making all schools free can be very expensive for the state economy,
advantages are invaluable. After several years, such improvements would bring fruits of
happiness, and an intelligent nation confident about its future.

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