Swedish study: free schools improve everyone's results. Pupils at the West London Free School. Picture: Getty What will free schools mean for the quality of education — in the new schools, and in the old ones they compete with? In Sweden, they don’t have to guess. They have almost 400 free schools, and data from millions of pupils. 1. 2. 3. 4.
The survey was large: every Swedish pupil who finished school between 1988 and 2009. Here’s their conclusion: ‘An increase in the share of independent-school students improves average educational performance both at the end of compulsory school and in the long run in terms of high school grades, university attendance and years of schooling… These effects are very robust with respect to a number of potential issues, such as grade inflation and pre-reform trends. PS Nick Pearce from the IPPR tweets that this study shows non-profit schools doing just as well as profit-seeking ones. The point of this study is that competition between council-run schools and independent schools benefits all pupils. New research shows that free schools are not recruiting minority and disadvantaged students.
On the day that marks the mid-term for the Coalition government, it was instructive to read some research conducted by Findings from Race on the Agenda (ROTA) which shows that free schools are not recruiting students from the most deprived backgrounds. ROTA do not appear to be against the free school policy per se, but are anxious that the programme should make sure that the most deprived students are included within it. The research shows that children from Black, Asian and minority ethnic communities (BAME), who are amongst some of the most acutely disadvantaged in education, are “notably lacking” in free schools (for a list of the key findings, read below) This is despite the fact that the Education Secretary has stated that free schools have been set up primarily to close the attainment gap.
Why is the mainstream media not highlighting this? 1. 2. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. PA707. Academy plan to use untrained teachers is an outrage | Francis Gilbert. The news today that the education secretary is to remove the requirement for academies to employ qualified teachers sent a shudder down my spine. For a teacher like me, who has taught for more than 20 years in various comprehensives and has spent a great deal of time, quite a bit of it my own time, being "trained", I know that pupils get a raw deal if they are taught by an untrained teacher. Firstly, a properly trained teacher is fully conversant with the various theories about how children learn; he or she understands that you can't just stand at the front and bark orders, that you need to engage children in "active" learning where they are doing things that assist with their learning. A well-trained teacher knows how to assess their pupils lesson by lesson, and use their assessments to shape further lessons, building upon a child's strengths and tackling their weaknesses.
I know I wouldn't be nearly as effective as a teacher had I not been trained. Owen Jones: Private school parents are wasting their money - Commentators - Opinion. It is a case that Labour has failed to make: the Government can boast that it is merely building on the policy foundations laid by New Labour. And now, there are worrying signs the Tories may be building a new consensus. Ed Miliband has handed the shadow education brief to arch-Blairite Stephen Twigg to the obvious delight of Education Secretary Michael Gove. "On the basis of everything that he has said so far," he crowed "I think there may be a real change in the Labour Party's approach towards the issue, so I encourage him on the path of virtue and say no more. " It marks a dramatic turnaround for the party that unleashed the comprehensive schools revolution.
New Labour's leading lights often claim Tony Crosland, the standard bearer of the party's post-war social democratic right, as their own. Separating children on the basis of their parents' bank balances denies children the opportunity to mix with others from a whole range of backgrounds, fostering divisions at the earliest age. Don't delude yourself about why you're sending your children to private school. If you follow me on Twitter you may already have seen me go into Hulk-smash mode about Guardian education writer Janet Murray’s article,“Why I sent my child to a private school.”
Here’s my (slightly) more reasoned response: Firstly, I won’t scold individual parents deciding they want to go private. I’m sure at least some of my friends will go down that route and, though I may disagree, I’m not going to lecture them at one of those Islington dinner parties us strawman liberals are alleged to attend every weekend. I know there are situations — for example extreme bullying, behavioural issues or unusually poor teachers — that might lead some parents to decide that their current school isn’t working. Just have the decency not to pretend that you’re taking a brave stand against an overwhelming tide of left-wing militancy that doesn’t actually, y’know, exist. I attended a private school, on hugely reduced fees, as did my oldest friend.
I’m grateful for the education it gave me. The initial enthusiasm for schools to convert to academy status has waned considerably. It may take decades for Michael Gove’s vision to be fully realised. Introduced by the Labour government in 2002, the campaign to convert schools to Academy status has been taken up with considerable gusto by the Education Secretary, Michael Gove. Using data provided by the Department for Education, John Fowler finds that while there were considerable applications for conversion to Academy status in the spring, the number of applications have now dropped significantly.
It may take decades before all schools achieve Academy status. “Come on in. The water’s lovely” was Secretary of State, Michael Gove’s answer when asked by ardent Academy supporter, Richard Fuller about schools which “have not yet got up the nerve” to convert to Academy status at Education Questions in the Commons on 21st November 2011. Meanwhile, the Times Educational Supplement had, a week earlier, declared that “the widespread adoption of Academy status has done more than anything else to emasculate what was left of local (government) education departments”. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3. Pupil Selection and Curriculum Content « The Wing to Heaven.
If you want to make yourself enemies in education, probably the best way to do so is to have a decided opinion about grammar schools. They are a litmus test for a whole range of other political and educational beliefs, particularly those to do with equality and elitism. For some people, grammar schools are elitist institutions which restrict educational opportunity to a small, already-privileged minority.
For others, they are a method for achieving high educational standards which benefit the whole of society. Then there is also what I will call the Andrew Neil thesis, after the documentary made by Neil about a year ago. His argument was that the grammar schools provided bright working-class and lower-middle class kids with a route to educational and career success. Far from being elitist and unfair institutions, they were actually engines of social mobility. One of the most striking pieces of evidence for Neil’s thesis is the social background of UK Prime Ministers.
But I disagree. Our schools do need change – but not Michael Gove's way. I started to watch Michael Gove's Conservative party conference speech online and on a train. After the first sentence, in which he announced that he was going to tell his audience "what is changing", I was treated to 30 minutes of the secretary of state "buffering" as the internet connection faltered, so I amused myself by writing my own speech about "what is not changing".
It goes something like this... We still have the same old hierarchical and stratified school system. Even the vice-chair of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (who should know a bit about social segregation) last week raged about schools being "racial silos" – even if he did neatly sidestep the role that his own sector plays in sorting children by ethnicity, class and family income.
Government policy persistently endorses this sort of behaviour. Meanwhile, the mass centralisation of education continues apace. Before 1988, the Secretary of State for Education enjoyed three powers of direction.