From today’s Observer:
Nick Clegg has thwarted plans by the education secretary, Michael Gove, to allow the new generation of “free schools” to make profits in the state sector after a massive ideological battle over the coalition’s education policy…
Clegg’s aides say he has also persuaded Gove to amend the admissions code from 2013 to allow free schools and academies to give priority to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds (those on free school meals). Free schools and academies will be expected to do all they can to ensure that, as a minimum, they have the same amount of pupils on free school meals as the local average.
In a third move, Clegg has won a guarantee from Gove that all of the free schools set up in the next wave will either be in deprived areas or areas in need of more places. Many of the schools in the first wave are being set up in middle-class areas where critics say there is no proven need for extra places…
In a speech to teachers, parents and students, Clegg will say he is in favour of free schools, but will add: “I want them to be available to the whole community – open to all children and not just the privileged few. I want them to be part of a school system that releases opportunity, rather than entrenching it.
“They must not be the preserve of the privileged few, creaming off the best pupils while leaving the rest to fend for themselves, causing problems for and draining resources from other nearby schools. So let me give you my assurance: I would never tolerate that.”
You can read the full story here.
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29 Comments
If he had, in addition, prevented the bribes that are being given to ‘free’ schools then I would actually be impressed by him.
Nick Clegg has stopped the Tories from doing something they repeatedly promised not to do? Don’t you usually debunk these type of stories?
Half of the free schools opening in the next two weeks are located in the 30% most deprived communities.
Helm is a master of invention.
after a year and a half Clegg has actually done something worth while. Shame he has wrecked the party and let the tories do what they want before this (and most probably be after this) so credit where credit is due. Good things 1: bad things 1000. At least he is catching up.
Guido is right Mark, the Conservatives would not be allowing free schools to make a profit had they a majority and have ruled this out previously.
If we wanted proper scrutiny of the Govt’s education policies we could ask why are the Liberal Democrats supporting the creation of free schools and academies in Govt, even though the Party is opposed to them and new academies massively concentrate power with pre-existing governors, not empower teachers or parents. We could also ask why are new Academy faith schools able to teach instructional RE and discriminate in the selection of their pupils and teachers on religious grounds; why the Govt continually refuses to require schools to teach age appropriate sex education, despite widespread support from across the political spectrum, educationalists, parents and pupils; why do they want to down grade the teaching of Citizenship, as well and down play the arts, RE and vocational qualifications through the E Bacc (weren’t we supposed to reduce central targets, rather than replace old ones with new ones?).
Education is social engineering for Liberals and it is devastating that education policy has almost entirely been surrendered to the Conservative right.
Of course, the way the private sector plans to get its foot in the door of state services is to begin by appealing to the poor and disadvantaged, and to begin with non-profit deals. Once the idea of privatisation has taken hold, there is plenty of time to move onward into middle-class areas and drop the non-profit restrictions. Thus, Labour helped the private sector pioneer the academies concept in poor areas, and now the Tories are helping the private sector expand more widely.
The Observer also say:
“Sources close to Gove admitted last night that the education secretary had been hoping to allow free schools, which are set up by local people but still funded by the state, to make profits in the second term of a Tory-led government.”
Well, no doubt Gove is happy to maintain that hope, ready to implement it after 2015, when those pesky Lib Dems have either been thrown out of government, or else knuckled under, the way too many Lib Dems tend to do….
Meanwhile, Mark Pack has been quick to quote the article on the Observer page 6, but he hasn’t yet published anything about the Lib Dem – Shirley Williams – who leads today’s Observer front page:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/sep/03/shirley-williams-nhs-reforms-turmoil
I wonder why!
Why on earth would it matter I’d they did make a profit? What should matter is the quality of the education
On the subject of free schools, it looks as if those that have been established thus far are to be run by right-wing ideologues and religious conservatives. They will be able to do things (such as extend the school day) that the teachings unions will not permit (and prevented Blair from doing). What the children will be taught remains to be seen, but I am not hopeful.
Now to the claim that preventing free schools from making a profit is the only occasion on which Nick Clegg has stood up to Cameron. Not quite. Not nearly quite. Nick Clegg was forced by his membership to delay Lansley’s blueprint for the stealth privatisation of the NHS (aka the Health & Social Care Bill), and he has made it clear that his MPs will not agree to the repeal of the Human Rights Act, and will not agree to tax cuts for the rich.
The Parliamentary Party may be propping up a right-wing Tory government, and has certainly given up its independence and sacrificed a few principles in so doing, but it is not true to say that Nick Clegg and his team have capitulated on all but one occasion.
What I want to hear from Nick Clegg now is his commitment to oppose the H&SCB in its present form, and an expression of total, implacable opposition to Cameron’s proposals to bring in blanket martial law for young people and forced labour for 16 year-olds. I would also like to hear him excoriate those multi-millionaires who blame the poor for the nation’s ills and claim that those sections of the community outside the economic elite are morally decayed.
Now that the Tory Party has emerged in its true colours as a party of the authoritarian, social-Darwinist hard right, let’s see how the Parliamentary Party now positions itself.
Is it Lib Dem day over at the Guardian? The leading three stories at http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics are “Williams plunges NHS reforms into turmoil”, “Clegg defeats Gove over free schools” and “Steel: Vote against abortion changes”.
Well, they are starting to report some of the things we are doing, for a change.
Tony Greaves
@ Simon McGrath
“Why on earth would it matter I’d they did make a profit? What should matter is the quality of the education”
Because it has been proved time and time again that when the profit motive is introduced to public services, it is the profit motive that predominates over quality and consistency of provision. That’s why.
@ Guido Fawkes
“Nick Clegg has stopped the Tories from doing something they repeatedly promised not to do?”
Repeated promises mean nothing when they run contrary to the Conservative party’s oft-demonstrated ruling ideology that for-profit organisations are inherently the highest form of economic life.
Some of Sweden’s free schools are profit-making – I wonder if there’s any evidence to show whether they are worse or better than those that are not. Or whether it appears to make no difference.
I would question how a publicly funded school could pay a dividend to its backers (shareholders?) unless it either skimped on education or was getting a grossly distorted share of the education budget. Or both. A modest surplus ploughed back into education would be a different matter.
Strange that the profit making schools in this country have consistently achieved the highest results with the broadests of curriculums….
@Cogload
“Strange that the profit making schools in this country have consistently achieved the highest results with the broadests of curriculums….”
Really? Are you comparing like with like? – i.e. comparing profit making schools with state schools that receive the same amount of funding per pupil, have the same assets and have the same admissions policy?
Guido’s right, the Conservative Party has repeatedly stated that free schools will not be allowed to be for profit. This “victory” is just a bone that’s been thrown to Clegg. The other moves that appeared in the article are also suspect since they’ve been publicised for some time by the likes of Toby Young. Whether they belong to Clegg or not, this article is certainly spin from someone close to him.
“Strange that the profit making schools in this country have consistently achieved the highest results with the broadests of curriculums….”
Very much agreed.
Toby Young has an article on the same topic on the telegraph blogs.
The Observer article seem like foolish piffle.
@Tony – is that because we are telling them about them though. IE we’ve stopped trying to present the coalition as a blend which was our strategy at one point.
“Strange that the profit making schools in this country have consistently achieved the highest results with the broadests of curriculums….”
Not that strange. How much money do they have at their disposal? Isn’t it governments that insist on a damagingly narrow National Curriculum for the state sector? Also, some of these profitable schools (not all) are very selective about their intake
It’s sometimes that forgotten that in Finland – which is often cited as having the very best education system – it’s actually illegal for a school to charge fees. I don’t suggest that for the UK but let’s look at the facts while giving opinions.
@Jedibeeftrix
“Strange that the profit making schools in this country have consistently achieved the highest results with the broadests of curriculums….
Toby Young has an article on the same topic on the telegraph blogs.”
I once had an online discussion with Toby Young about the exam results of grammar vs comprehensive schools. He was completely unwilling to acknowledge the fact that selecting the top 20% of pupils by academic ability might have some bearing on the difference in results. Toby Young’s hardly an example of a rational person to be quoting, although he is a fine example of the anti-intellectualism, anti-knowledge, anti-science, anti-evidence based approach of many on the right these days.
Toby Young is to a discussion on education what James Delingpole is to a discussion on global warming.
Who’s informing Nick that this is the issue? One of the main points is that Free Schools will have no requirement for any training for teachers. At all. Literally the HeadMasters best mate can be employed and teach, withough any experience or qualifications behind them at all. I agree the profit motive doesn’t have a place in schools but my god….we, and Sarah Teather and Nick Clegg seriously need to look at education.
Gove physically makes me want to cry as I’m so ANGRY with him over Academies, Free Schools and how education is being smacked from both sides. How can, for example, the gov’t want Schools to be more accountable, then want them all to be academies which have no accountability? How can the government say teacher training is vital, yet also allow Free Schools to have no training required?
I’m angry. Beyond belief. And I have virtually no ability to do anything about it, as the FCC doesn’t see education as important.
Why can’t we just end tax breaks for independent schools, or cap them so that such schools cannot obtain more public money per pupil than regular state schools?
@ guido
the tories also promised at one time no top down reorganisation of the NHS, but its happening.
this is the latest in a series of impacts the lib dems are having on the coalition, and the media operation is now smart enough to get it into the papers…..
it should have been done a long time ago, to show the lib dem victopries on the pupil premium, inheritance tax, tax cuts for the poorest workers, and many miore…and doing all that while having us at 16% in the polls the exact number we were on 12 months after the 2005 election!
Why is it that whenever I hear about a Liberal Democrat victory over the Tories, they are boasting about having stopped the Tories from allowing something?
Why is Clegg boasting about having made sure that fewer free schools will be opened, and in fewer areas? Is this going to be a boast made in the next election campaign: “without us, someone might have opened a new school in your area! Vote for us!”
@ Old Codger Chris: “Some of Sweden’s free schools are profit-making – I wonder if there’s any evidence to show whether they are worse or better than those that are not. Or whether it appears to make no difference.”
Yes, there is. The profit-making schools were slightly less effective than the non-for-profit free schools, but far more effective than the local authority run state-schools, at improving pupil outcomes. Crucially, however, there were a lot of them. Without profit-making schools, far fewer pupils would have benefited from the free schools; far larger numbers would have had to make do with the less-effective state-schools.
What is more, the profit-making schools were not set up by parents for the benefits of their own children and so were more likely to be located in areas of need rather than in areas where articulate, organised parents lived. This is crucial: if Nick really wants free schools “to be available to the whole community” and to benefit pupils in deprived areas, he needs to look at what will incentivise providers to enter deprived communities. The profit motive is remarkably effective at that.
@ RC @ Old Codger Chris:
The average amount spent per pupil by private schools was (a few years ago) around £5,000, which was roughly the same as the level of spend in the public sector. Not all private schools are Eton and Winchester. They out-perform state schools without the benefit of extra money.
@ ad:
I agree. The victories we should be highlighting are the one’s where we have actually initiated something, as is the case with the increase in the personal tax allowance and the Pupil Premium.
And I think your satirical election slogan highlights a genuine problem with the election campaign we will have to run in 2015.
There’s an interesting piece of research from Stanford University linked to over at LFF (http://www.leftfootforward.org/2011/09/michael-gove-united-states-for-profit-free-schools/), which looks at the US KIPP charter schools and how they’re actually performing for pupils facing issues over learning, it finds they support 50% fewer children with disabilities and 40% fewer children who aren’t native speakers of English, leading to a double advantage for their performance vs their competitors as they benefit from homogeneous classes, while the state schools pick up more than their fair share of children with more complex needs and less than adequate funding, compromising the achievement of every pupil (incidentally this cherrypicking of pupils is precisely the same behaviour I’ve seen from our local grammar schools).
Monitoring free school meals may identify whether pupils from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are being supported, it won’t pick-up whether these schools are adequately supporting the more randomly socially dispersed children with disabilities, nor necessarily the speakers of English as a second language.
@Tom Papworth
This paper tends to disagree with your opinions: http://www.llakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Wiborg-online.pdf
From the conclusions:
English policy-makers and the press have made much of the parallels between the ‘free-school’ type reforms here and the Swedish experiment. In fact they are far from identical and operate in a different context:
1. The Swedish experiment (using for-profit private providers) has proved expensive and has not led to significant learning gains overall.
2. At the same time the Swedish reforms, albeit on a small scale, appear to have increased inequality, even in the context of this very egalitarian system.
3. In the context of a more divided system, similar reforms in England may have more damaging effects on inequality and school segregation.
On the basis of the Swedish experience, the following questions need to be addressed:
1. Are parents in England really interested in running schools? Sweden has a limited tradition of this, but England does not, so why would we expect to seea large number of locally run schools in England when this is not even the typical outcome in Sweden? It seems more likely that private education providers will run the schools on a not-for-profit basis, but Sweden is not the best model for this since its experiment has involved for-profit schools.
2. Should Swedish companies be allowed to run schools in England when they are not able to produce outstanding results?
3. Is more choice desirable if free schools do not reconcile high academic standards and social integration?
4. And finally, how can the existing comprehensive schools in England compete on equal terms with the free schools if they are not subject to the same regulation and receive less state funding? Is this fair?
@David G
Good point about the cherrypicking of pupils. The advantage private schools (and free schools) have over the state sector is that they can simply exclude any pupil they don’t like, either through selection or expulsion. State schools do not have this luxury – even if a pupil is expelled then they will just end up in another state education establishment elsewhere. With free schools, state schools will become more like sink schools, taking care of the difficult pupils that are likely to disrupt others’ education and contribute to poor results.
@Steve:
How interesting. This report finds the complete oppostite.
From the conclusion:
The evidence does not suggest that voucher reform is a panacea that automatically will improve all students’ results radically, regardless of other social and economic changes. It does suggest, however, that it can improve educational achievement on the margin even during a period of economic instability – and in times of sharp budget cuts this opportunity should not be forsaken.
Furthermore, fears of the profit motive in education do not stand up to empirical scrutiny. Swedish for-profit schools do better than municipal schools in terms of school average GPA [the national testing for all pupils] and for-profit and non-profit schools’ overall effects are comparable. Furthermore, the impact of for-profit schools can be seen to benefit students from lower socio-economic backgrounds the most, while affecting other students positively as well. Non-profit schools, however, have more uneven effects. Given that the estimates presented here are likely to err on the side of caution, further research to determine more precise effects of for-profit/non-profit schools is necessary. However, the analysis does indicate that for-profit schools do not conform to predictions made by opponents.
In fact, even though the role of non-profits should not be underestimated, there is little evidence to suggest that the Swedish reform would successfully have increased competition and educational attainment without the profit motive. This is something the UK government should learn from. Indeed, Anders Hultin, advisor to the 1991-1994 Swedish centre-right government and the architect of the voucher reform, has rightly argued that ‘if you’re not allowing profit-making organisations the scheme could fail. [Otherwise] You need to rely on charities and there are already a lot of charities running schools in this country’ (Guardian, 2 October 2009). Michael Gove’s calculations that about 2,000-3,000 new schools could emerge due to voucher reform in the UK are simply misguided due to the lack of a profit motive. Ironically, when Gove saw the ‘future’ in the Swedish voucher reform, he missed one of its essential ingredients.
It might be good politics to develop the reforms around unsubstantiated ideological fears of introducing a profit motive in a publicly funded education system, but it is poor policy. By schooling for money, the majority of Swedish independent schools have increased competition and standards. Banning state-funded, for-profit independent schools in the UK would put the voucher reform at risk of failing and would thus be a great disservice to students, parents and the education system in general.
@ David G @ Steve
Incidentally, the author of the above report controlled for socio-economic background and other factors when examining the data, so the question of cherry-picking the best pupils is moot.
And to reiterate, it is for-profit providers that have the incentives to move beyond the middle class suburbs and tailor to children in poorer areas or those from families with a history of less education. The system in the UK as it stands seems designed to tailor only for the articulate, organised middle-classes who want to set up schools to benefit their own children. If Nick is serious about expanding the benefits to all – and especially disadvantaged – children, he needs to recognise that the best way to do this is to open the market up to for-profit providers.
@Tom Papworth
Thanks for the replies.
I haven’t had a chance to read the report you posted yet. However, the report I posted was from a university research group, whereas the report you posted was from a lobbying group (Institute of Economic Affairs) with a track record of producing highly prejudiced (that always suit their political ideological bent) and risible reports. I’ve never actually read anything from the Institute of Economic Affairs that wasn’t a pile of worthless junk (in objective terms, based on the evidence), but I will endeavour to read the report later when I have some time.
“This is something the UK government should learn from. Indeed, Anders Hultin, advisor to the 1991-1994 Swedish centre-right government and the architect of the voucher reform”
How about quoting someone that’s actually looked at the issue objectively, rather than someone with a huge vested interest (and a dodgy lobbying group)?