Unsurprisingly, Brother Nelson has a useful primer on some of the latest skirmishing over the Tories plans to introduce (in England) Swedish-style education reform. I’m also pleased he highlighted this Polly Toynbee column since, while she tries to claim, erroneously, that Sweden’s Free Schools are merely middle-class playthings she ends up by arguing that:
Japan is a case unto itself for all sorts of reasons, but it’s worth observing that two of her other favourite countries – Sweden and the Netherlands – are societies that have embraced the logic and power of school choice. And since everyone agrees that education is vital, one might think that the school policies pursued in Sweden and the Netherlands have played some part in making them the kind of society that Mrs Toynbee so admires.The only countries where children succeed according to talent and perseverance more than social class are the most equal societies: the Nordics, Japan, the Netherlands. Whatever the school system, Britain’s dysfunctional inequality will usually trump teaching.
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