Gove’s ‘free schools’ will be able to profit

In all the excitement, I forgot to flag up to Coffee Housers a fact that we dropped in the leader column of today’s magazine. Michael Gove’s new Swedish schools will, it seems, be allowed to make a profit. I said in the editorial that:

“Crucially, it now looks likely that the new schools will be able to run for profit — as Anders Hultin, the architect of the Swedish system, argued in this magazine last week. This may come in the form of a ‘management fee’. But if this happens, then Britain’s obsession with the quality of schools could blossom into an education industry.”

Hultin’s article was picked up by The Daily Telegraph. Profit, he says, means Britain would have an education industry. Teachers as entrepreneurs. Without profit, Cameron and Gove would have to rely on charities with far less motive to expand and pride themselves on the length of their waiting list – as is the case in Sweden.