Author Archives: Christopher Leslie

Tony Blair won his first election in 1997 on the back of his refrain, “education, education, education”, and in the run up to a likely 2010 general election the party leaders have already begun positioning themselves as offering radical proposals for education.

Nick Clegg and David Cameron have both voiced their support for seeing the introduction of Swedish-style ‘free schools’, where state funding, as is already standard, follows individual pupils; but in the case of free schools it also follows pupils into independent schools. Both Cameron and Clegg have made it clear that these schools would not involve academic selection (indicating a return to grammar schools) or be able to charge a top up fees (indicating the introduction of school vouchers). Both leaders are right to do so. Taking either or both those options would see an end to the meritocratic basis on which education is provided: state funding in education should go to all, regardless of ability, and shouldn’t be used to help the rich gain superior education.

On a similar theme, both leaders should also make it clear that they will not allow other barriers of entry to pupils, such as religion for example, and they shouldn’t become places for specific NGOs to promote their own agendas. Free schools need to be inclusive once pupils are in them.

Both Clegg and Cameron are right to support free schools: they offer a great chance to increase civil society, to provide better education in Britain, a greater level of plurality, and parents and children having increased choice and control in their education.

By declaring that the Conservatives will not allow firms to make a profit from the fee school system, however, Cameron is failing to fully utilise the opportunities free schools could offer, and which can only be accessed by allowing profit-making into the system. This might be the tokenistic suspicion of any institution making profit from state money; a refusal to take that idea to a public he fears won’t accept it; or that he’d rather see free schools be the sole domain of NGOs – which reveals a scary amount of paternalism. Whichever is the case, Clegg should not make the same mistake.