Cut the police. Severely.
(This applies to the US, but I'm sure it applies to the UK, too. Slightly off topic, anyway.)
Cut the police. Sack a good lot of them. Fire literally every single cop who has ever done anything wrong. The same goes for politicians. Can the war on drugs, tell the Mexicans we'll take care of their cartel problem, give all of them citizenship and tell them to be nice or else, and start selling drugs legally with a huge tax on them. It'll certainly make us tons of money. (For you in the UK - Can the Eurofighter, tell the French we'll take care of their Roma problem for them, and launch them out of big giant cannons at any invading forces. It'll certainly be cheaper.)
Then simultaneously lower the cost of attending public university while raising the requirements to graduate. Offer incentives for kids to finish high school, such as a free pair of Doc Martens and a nice good head shaving (they're the twats who need to stay in school the most, yes?) or the likes. Disincentivize business degrees (not because I dislike business, quite to the contrary, I fucking love money, but business degrees teach you absolutely fuckall about business) and incentivize science, mathematics, history and arts degrees. Require high school level teachers to have Masters degrees but offer significantly higher pay so that it becomes extremely worthwhile to pursue teaching as a career. Tie teachers' pay and job security to their performance. etc.
I agree that this is sort of coming off like passing around the begging bowl, but cutting funding to education is never a good idea. Fire shitty teachers and professors, yes, so they utilize less resources and the good ones get more, but never, ever cut funding to an all ready flailing program, as you'll just guarantee it sinks further.