Free schools: good for all schools
Fraser Nelson 4:37pm
Free schools are all well and good – but what about the schools that remain? Some
CoffeeHousers raise this question in response to my earlier blog, and it’s important enough to deserve
a post in itself. Because introducing new schools to compete with council schools is the best way of raising standards for all – and studies around the world prove this. The ‘free
schools’ agenda is not some Govian brainwave, but a simple reform that is being enacted from Chile to Obama's charter schools. The fullest example of this has been in Sweden, which the Gove
system is modelled on, where about 13 percent of upper secondary kids are now in free schools. Crucially, one does not have to rely on a theory of what-ifs and scare stories from the unions; we now
have over a decade’s worth of data and academic studies which show that the system works for ALL schools.
The Swedish experiment showed that a free school competing with local schools drove up standards in the other council-run schools. Money follows the pupils. The councils see, for the first time,
that if they don’t satisfy parents they will lose their custom. This focuses their attention and has had a galvanising effect on Swedish education. A rising tide has lifted all boats.
After ten years of free schools in Sweden, Mikael Sandstrom, now a state secretary in the Swedish government, conducted a massive academic study
into the policy’s success, using a data set of about 28,000 pupils in about 250 council areas. First, Sandstrom’s study shows that free schools were set up where the quality of local
schools was below average – i.e. where the demand was greatest. We should not be surprised by this, but it counters CoffeeHouser Braveheart’s suggestion that only middle-class parents and religious groups will set up
schools (the work will likely not be done by Toby Young et al, but by the new breed of popular school chains – ARK and Harris to name but two). Richer parents play the current system
anyway. They buy a house in a posh area and get a pretty good state school, whilst the wealthiest 7 percent take their kids private.
The demand for school choice is among those parents who cannot afford to move to a posh catchment area, and are desperate for their child to do better than the local sink school. Few forces on
earth are more powerful than the desire of a parent to do well by their child. The ‘free school’ system will be powered by this force – not by government control. For all too many
kids, they represent a route out of the ghetto in the way the old grammar schools did.
Sandstrom’s study also shows that the surrounding council schools improved in direct proportion to the competition. Increasing the percentage of kids educated in a free school by 1 percent
produced an improvement in results of all kids equivalent to a 5 percent increase in funding (pg.32).
There comes, in the vernacular, a tipping point. All you need is enough free schools (I’d say about 12 percent nationally) where pupils genuinely have a choice. When they do, and parents are
able to flee underperforming schools, the others raise their game markedly – and more sharply than they would with less money. An ideal policy for the austerity era. Incidentally, councils in
Sweden often complain about more competition from free schools – saying “please, no more misery, we’ve lost enough pupils already”. The Swedish left has no problem saying
“well, your schools must be pretty bad then – we’re on the side of the parent” because both free and council schools are in the state system. Therefore, the sectarian
language we hear in Britain about “opting out” just doesn’t make sense: it will all be in the state system.
So Rhoda Klapp et al, this is Gove’s idea. It is emphatically not for a minority. The attainment gap in British private and public schools is the highest in Europe –
there’s plenty of scope to close this gap. We do education pretty well in England: it’s time to extend this excellence for all. The new ‘free schools’ or Academies will do
more than offer the poor the same choice as the rich now enjoy: they will be pacemakers, encouraging other neighbouring schools to improve faster than any central edict could manage. It really is
an education policy for all.
Previous
Robert Eve
October 26th, 2010 4:45pm Report this commentGood post Fraser!
Sir Graphus
October 26th, 2010 4:48pm Report this commentThe crucial aspect is to change the school and headmaster's priority from trying to impress the LEA, to trying to impress the parents.
Thus our snivelling beatle-like headmaster would have to divert his and his teachers' energies away from dreaming up daft eye-catching initiatives that might enhance his profile at the LEA, and concentrate on teaching and discipline. He's already said he's against free schools, mainly because that cushy and better paid job at the LEA he aspires to will be abolished.
Ian Fordham
October 26th, 2010 4:58pm Report this commentGood to see some evidence informing the debate - there's been too much rhetorical posturing about the potential impact of free schools. I'm sure there will be other evidence from Charter Schools in the US to add to this mix and also our report launched last week on Free Schools Thinking too http://www.bcse.uk.net/downloads//FreeSchoolsThinking.pdfhttp://www.bcse.uk.net/downloads//FreeSchoolsThinking.pdf
Sir Graphus
October 26th, 2010 5:19pm Report this commentI meant beetle-like, not Beatle-like; with apologies to John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Fatbloke on tour
October 26th, 2010 5:24pm Report this commentTrevor aka "Fraser" -- the fastest spinner in the Nelson family even though my brother is a DJ
Will they teach economics?
Will they produce numerate individuals comfortable in dealing with complex topics like employment rates and workforce numbers?
Dan Grover
October 26th, 2010 5:36pm Report this commentSir Graphus is absolutely right. The aspirations of the headteachers won't change; They'll still try and impress those that pay them, as in doing so they secure more funding. All that's changing is that the people that need to be impressed are the parents (and, to a lesser extent, the pupil), rather than the local LEA.
I don't think this makes a headteacher bad, if they currently appease the LEA. As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game; He or she needs funding, and if that's how they get it, so be it - the problem is that the incentives are for the wrong thing, not that the headmasters and mistresses are taking up those incentives.
Fatbloke on tour
October 26th, 2010 5:42pm Report this commentTrevor
I fear you are destroying your own argument.
That is "Free" schools as agents of change.
They may be in Sweden but we already have them in the form of academies and specialised schools in the UK.
Consequently the "Free" school concept is a sop to middle class segregationists who want to keep the sprogs away from the poor and the great unwashed.
Two points to conclude:
1) Wouldn't it be easier if we al had a bit of whip round for TY so that he can send the sprogs to a good public school?
2) Won't the "Economic Cleansing" put forward by ConDems not keep the hoi polloi out the catchment areas for the existing schools that serve "Nappy Valley" and all the other middle class enclaves in our great cities?
Dimoto
October 26th, 2010 6:14pm Report this commentThe problem in the UK might be that we don't have a Swedish (or even American) culture of self improvement. That old working class self-education ethic has long gone, unfortunately.
A lot of parents in deprived areas, just don't see education as important/an avenue for a better life for their kids, and they are usually easily bullied into conformity by the local Labour aparatchiks who appeal to their tribal loyalty and (the well embedded) envy culture.
I have seen several crystal clear cases of parents deliberately holding back their own, (bright and ambitious) kids.
The arguments are along the lines of : "we are working class and we want Wayne to stay with his roots", "You don't need no education to make a lot of money, my cousin is a dealer in the city and is minted, and he left school mat 16", "I don't want Shane coming home talking posh and getting ideas, He needs to be able to go down the pub wiv his old man". etc. or, "my bruv Troy, used to hang out wiv the lads, but now he's gone all poncey and thinks he's too good for us - it's embarrassing!"
I would love to be proved wrong.
AndyLeeds
October 26th, 2010 6:36pm Report this commentAnything which breaks the power of the LEA and the damned Teaching Unions should be welcomed. I would also introduce vouchers which parents could take to any school they chose. That would help transform education.
mat
October 26th, 2010 7:47pm Report this commentwould recommend "The Beautiful Tree" to all interested. Free (& budget private) schools appear to work across the world.
http://jamestooley.net/
TGF UKIP
October 26th, 2010 7:55pm Report this commentWell, if headbanging, obsessive stubborness be consider a virtue, you are deserving of unstinting admiration, Fraser.
Your problem, though, is not the idea per se, indeed it would be difficult for anyone on the Right to disagree with the principles embodied but the mountainous obstruction in its way is the politics.
As you frequently point out there are massed ranks of well-entrenched, highly motivated self-interested parties determined to see off this assault on their fortresses and I'm afraid your forces are just too meagre and too badly led to fight a successful battle.
A government with a large majority, and one probably in its second term with a successful record, and a powerful and experienced Secretary of State in charge of the Education Dept and you might just have had a chance Fraser.
Unfortunately for you, though, those conditions do not exist. Your mate's fuck-ups so far have badly undermined his credibility and authority and the government in which he serves is neither strong nor poweful but a coalition in which the minor party with its LA roots is strongly opposed to your policy.
Most worrying of all for you, Fraser, must be the knowledge that however much Gove might be a mate, your Leader is an instinctive temporizer and appeaser who will elevate keeping his beloved coalition together, above any single policy and especially one which arouses such LibDem hostility as this one.
Indeed, I would guess that one of Dave's principal political preoccupations at present is how to extract himself from this embarrassment particularly given how firmly he previously tied his colours to your Swedish kite.
HJ
October 26th, 2010 8:33pm Report this commentFraser -
Referring to children as "kids" was something I hoped we'd heard the last of with the demise of New Labour.
Please.
Tiberius
October 26th, 2010 9:24pm Report this comment"A rising tide has lifted all boats".
Quite right, Fraser, and equally (as Bob Marley sang) "when the rain falls it don't fall on one man's house." Many in the comprehensive system are indeed soaked to the skin.
TGF: take your tongue out of your cheek. You'll give yourself ulcers.
daniel maris
October 26th, 2010 9:28pm Report this commentThe problem with this policy is that it is based on a sham, the sham being that all parents want their children to pursue academic learning seriously and that all children are capable of academic learning.
So, we have the sham of Toby Young operating a "comprehensive" school but will in effect be a private grammar funded by the state.
The way forward is not this ridiculously expensive face-saving exercise. No, there is a simple solution - there should be different sorts of schools - academies, general schools and business&vocational schools (in fact v. much along the lines of the 44 Act which envisaged grammars, secondary moderns and technical schools).
But the problem of selection and choice can be eliminated at a stroke. Parents shoudl be able to choose the school for their children (though teachers would be allowed to make a recommendation). If a school was oversubsribed, it would have to find new premises. The system could be kept in balance by (a) have the choice made at age 10 rather than 11, so schools have time to prepare for their numbers (b) incentives to join undersubscribed schools e.g. free personal tuition, free sports equipment etc.
The money would follow the pupil.
Fatbloke on tour
October 26th, 2010 10:11pm Report this commentTrevor
You make an interesting point by highlighting the role that will / could be played by educational chains in developing the "Free" school idea.
You diminish the role that groups of like minded parents could play in all of this and so limit the "bottom up" dynamic that has so far been a main plank of the case for "Free" schools.
That is that parents are ignored and marginalised by the educational establishment who pander to the teacher / producer lobby.
You put that to one side an major on the profit making / empire building aspect where existing providers can expand in a hap hazard fashion outside of the control or direction of central or local government.
In this you seem to be pushing brand management or market segmentation into the field of education with all the issues that such attitudes will bring.
Segmentation = Focussed offering
Profit motive = Economic element to decision making.
Economic Element = Income specifically parental income.
Profit margin = Reduced costs or increased income.
All of these drivers suggest that "Free" schools are not going to be some sort of latter day peasants revolt with the little people leading the march to an educational nirvana that big bad government has been hiding from us since 1918.
No it looks like a land grab, a privatisation by the back door. The Enclosure Act meets education if you like where the change is not needs based or demand led but a (new) producer led branding exercise aimed at high spend / income consumers.
Consequently the worst of all worlds.
The academy programme was aimed at the failing elements of public education, time, effort and resources aimed at the areas where the public sector education offering was at its weakest. Tough sell at the time to certain individuals but big step forward for those at the bottom as you yourself admit.
Then the information and comments regarding Sweden and the US suggest that this is where their efforts were focused. The political support in these areas suggests that this true and is one of the reasons for their continued relevance.
However when it comes to the UK I feel that you are being guilty of naivety if you think that the commercial drivers involved and their most fertile clientele will allow the "Free" school network to develop as you envisage -- Nordic values, UK setting.
Profit motive = Costs vs Income.
In this field income has the greater capacity to increase than cost have of being cut. Income increases points to secondary income streams which means high spend consumers.
Please don't try and argue that this will not happen, where there is a will a way will be found, justified and legalised.
High spend consumers = Sharp elbowed middle classes.
UK "Free" schools will lead to pupil segmentation and class segregation.
Those like "me" will band together to capture all the benefits and keep those unlike "me" outside the fence.
Add in the issues regarding planning, a hollowing out of the existing system and the probability that the final destination of this idea is educational anarchy and free for all means that the 80 - 20 rule will come into play.
20% will benefit
80% won't.
At the top it will be co-pays, top up fees and salary sacrifice.
At the bottom it will be cash-back and sewing mailbags in the afternoon.
Education:
Needs a shake up = Yes.
"Free" schools = No
More of the same is what we need.
Not ConDem cuts and robbing Peter to pay Paul.
TGF UKIP
October 26th, 2010 11:07pm Report this commentI am tempted to say "Cheeky!", Tiberius, trouble is though, I haven't a clue what your barb refers to. Sometimes, you seem so abstrusely sophisticated that I am certain you must have moved from the West Midlands down to West London, Notting Hill, perhaps.
Be that as it may, however, can't help noticing that your other hero and fellow Dave worshipper, Chuck Moore, had an interesting and incisive piece on energy and "climate change" in the DT last Saturday.
Instructive isn't it, another Barclay organ where an ex Editor is prepared to go where the present house mag Editor clearly dares not go. Must be something in the Speccie Articles of Association the brothers can't override.
RobertD
October 26th, 2010 11:09pm Report this commentDimeto,
The US education is important culture is strongly enforced by the other half of the equation. No graduation from school = very poor job prospects and no social security to fall back on. The kids know that there is a big stick for not making an effort.
The other part of the Obama programme was to make a substantial amount of new funding dependent upon renegotiation of union contracts that now make it easier to fire underperforming teachers. No change in working practices = no new federal money.
Culture change can be encouraged by celebrating and supporting success, but it is embedded by large sticks to break up bad practice and stop back sliding.
Chuck Unsworth
October 27th, 2010 8:17am Report this commentNote FoT comment:
"more of the same is what we need"
a) Who is this 'we'?
b) He's clearly suggesting that more educational failure is required.
After all, Education x 3 as propounded by Labour has led to the current disastrous state.
If the basics are being taught badly, everything else is a waste of time.
The centralisation of curriculum and proscription of teaching of the past decade has been immensely stupid - and has done profound damage to many thousands of children. Their futures have been sacrificed on the hubris and meddling of any numbers of Labour Ministers for 'Education'.
Nicholas
October 27th, 2010 10:15am Report this commentI don't think FoT is one person. I think it is a collective pseudonym used by a blog-monitoring, damage limitation team run under Prescott and funded by the Unions. There are 3 FoT posts in this thread and their construction, tone and thrust are inconsistent.
Vettekulla
October 27th, 2010 10:32am Report this commentFraser
It is better than you convey. Here are the latest figures for Sweden:
At the end of 2009 some 46.9 percent of all high schools (gymnasium), and 15.2 percent of primary and secondary schools (grundskola), were independently run, according to agency figures.
Also worth pointing out that all political parties and the teachers union in Sweden support free schools making profits. Only the extreme left union led by a communist whose sadest moment was watching the Berlin wall come down is against - so that puts the UK opponents in good company!
Vettekulla
October 27th, 2010 10:33am Report this commentCorrection to last comment "saddest". Why does your comment box freeze all the time?
David Vinter
October 27th, 2010 11:37am Report this commentMr Nelson is deluded, Grammar Schools ensured a larger percentage of poor children went to top universities, than is the case today. Frankly I think we could do with 250 new urban ones for a start.
Mr Nelson, may well not know there many pupils that came on to Grammar School at age
12,13, and 16. In my class 30% of the boys were the sons of farmworkers!
Fatbloke on tour
October 27th, 2010 1:46pm Report this commentCharles U @ 8.17
I will make it simple for you, a leading member of the militant wing of the Speccy right wing mentalist "thick as shit at the neck of a bottle" brigade.
We need more investment in failing schools.
TB / AA made a start but more was / is needed. The poorest performers need the most help and that is what their plans were trying to do.
"Free" schools as envisaged by wee Smurphy start at the top with major opportunities for the sharp elbowed middle class increase social segregation in public sector education.
Interesting idea, overtaken by events in the UK being pushed through at any cost by an ideological minister pushing a pet project.
This is only act 1 in a drive to get vouchers into education so that Dave the Rave can send the sprogs to Eton with a public subsidy.
Simon Stephenson
October 27th, 2010 2:05pm Report this comment"Because introducing new schools to compete with council schools is the best way of raising standards for all – and studies around the world prove this."
Come on Fraser! Those who are skeptical about the intensity of your motives are not going to be persuaded by a piece of rhetoric like this. In a world where nothing should be taken for what it seems, what can you do to convince us that the free-school project is principally about improving education standards for all, and that giving the Conservative-supporting middle-classes an escape route for their children is no more than a by-product of a process that would be unjustifiable if it could not be seen to be capable of achieving its central aim?
Believe me when I say that major improvements to the education system are essential to the future well-being of this country, but that the focus must be on removing the entire underclass, not just giving the more caring parents a way to prevent their children from being held back by it.
Simon Stephenson
October 27th, 2010 2:27pm Report this commentHJ : 8.33pm
"Referring to children as "kids" was something I hoped we'd heard the last of with the demise of New Labour.
Please."
Yes. Also referring to mothers and fathers as mums and dads.
Coeur de Lion
October 27th, 2010 2:38pm Report this commentDoes Sir Grsphus live in Ealing?
Rhoda Klapp
October 27th, 2010 4:10pm Report this commentThe tricklr-down thing may be true, but it is too slow. Even Fatbloke is right (I know, but whatcha gonna do?) that the worst schools need tackling far more seriously than the miffling middle-class ones. Of course, they do not need 'more investment' as much as immediate implementation of best practice, no excuses, no get-outs. Or to put it another way, a kick up the arse. Don't know what 'best practice' is? Find out from a good school.
David Vinter
October 27th, 2010 4:55pm Report this commentThere seems to be a widespread theory about that if only enough money were to be thrown at the problem all children would become instant geniuses. Sorry but the world is not like that, there have always been, and will always be children with a very big range of intelligence. Just as some can run, others like me never could!
Chingford Man
October 27th, 2010 5:44pm Report this commentIf they really are "free schools" why can't they set academic admissions criteria? Answer: because they will be resprayed comprehensives.
TGF UKIP is right (as usual). Going against the many tentacles of the Left in Education requires more than what Dave and his fellow alumni of academic private schooling could ever offer.
Piers
October 28th, 2010 12:57am Report this commentThe report to which you refer was published in 2002, Fraser. I'd urge CoffeeHousers to read the far more recent and comprehensive http://bit.ly/cVOKZv
Year0y_Lenkins62
October 28th, 2010 10:08am Report this comment"the wealthiest 7 percent take their kids private."
you're wrong. there are people are private schools with bursaries, people at private schools who live abroad most of the year but board, people at state schools who attend for philosophical reasons [eg their parent being a Labour politician and having loads of money via her husband - eg Sue Nye] ... I could go on, but you get the picture. please be more careful with your demographic profiling of privately schooled people. it's this kind of lazy asserion which misrepresents the independent sector.
Patrick Hadley
October 28th, 2010 11:18am Report this commentThe research Mr Nelson links to is over eight years old and both out of date and of flawed methodology. Perhaps he does not know that all the recent research shows no benefit at all from the free school policy in Sweden. Anyone who wants to see whether I am right about this can check this for themselves by putt the terms "swedish free school research" into a search engine.
Patrick Hadley
October 28th, 2010 11:41am Report this commentIt is amazing that Mr Nelson can only find the Sandström and Bergström paper based on research in 2001 to support the Swedish free schools. That paper was demolished by Sören Wibe in 2002 who proved that its absurdly complex model had been designed specifically to give the results that the researchers wanted. There was an arbitary choice of variables and if you took out just one district, Pajala, or tested the model with other data sets, all the correlations vanished.
If there really were a genuine correlation between free schools and generally improved education then surely Sandström and Bergström or someone else would have been able to repeat their results in the last nine years.
In fact the reverse is the case and all the recent research published anywhere demonstrates that free schools do not lead to an improvement. But why let the facts spoil a good doctrinal argument?
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