It’s a question I’ve asked before, but it’s worth revisiting: if school choice is a nefarious right-wing plot to keep poor people poor and uneducated why is it that Sweden – Sweden! – has a nationwide school voucher programme that is supported by all political parties? Now clearly this doesn’t in and of itself demonstrate that open access school choice programmes are necessarily a magic bullet, but it might – or rather ought to – quieten some of the hysterical shrieking one hears from defenders of the status quo in both the USA and the UK. If school choice can be embraced by left-wing Swedes it’s just about possible it won’t cause the sky to fall tomorrow…
A new paper from the Adam Smith Institute (unsurprisingly!) suggests the UK could usefully copy Sweden’s voucher system and points out that in Sweden:
After the government allowed parents to send their children to any school that they thought was best — whether state, private or religious — and the government made sure that funding followed the pupil, as long as the school did not charge any top-up fees, Sweden experienced an unprecedented expansion in the independent school system.
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