Ahead of The Spectator’s schools revolution symposium next Tuesday (click here for details and tickets) we are running a series of articles about school reform. The below is a Swedish take on Swedish reform.
Is the Swedish model of profit-making schools going wrong? Michael Gove’s critics have started to say so, and British teachers unions warn that it has been shown to lead to all manner of ills — social segregation, deteriorating school results and simply bad schools — and that it would be a calamity for Britain to copy a failing model.
We Swedes listen to the British debate with fascination. The issue of profit-seeking schools was truly divisive — once. Then, these schools turned out to be so popular with parents that every political party (apart from the former Communists) has now dropped its opposition to a model which combines profit-seeking and choice with public funding.
The issue is, in Sweden, no longer a matter of theory.
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