Cameron’s privatisation plan is big society by coercion

For those of us who think this Government’s direction of travel on public services is the political equivalent of going for a midnight drive the wrong way down a dual carriageway with car lights turned off and eyes scrunched firmly shut, the prospect of David Cameron’s latest initiative presents an intellectual challenge, to say the least.

It seems the new plan emerging from the Conservatives is to privatise just about everything. Intriguingly, he does mean literally everything – except where, according to Cameron, it wouldn’t make sense (he cites just national security and the judiciary as the sacred turf to be kept out of private hands).

Remember that this comes from someone who, just days ago, said the Government had been gung-ho when planning to privatise large chunks of woodland, yet with this new plan he now seems to have said it’s all up for grabs. The grounds for deciding what constitutes ‘sense’ seem to be entirely his.

This doesn’t feel like steady ground on which to hurl our public services violently into the air. Beyond what Dave tells us, it seems there’s no clear basis for establishing what should best remain in public hands, let alone asking the public whether they are up for a revolution of this kind. Certainly there’s nothing so vulgar as whacking the idea in your manifesto and asking people to vote for it. Heaven forbid!

It’s hard to view Cameron’s intention as anything other than a dismantling of the welfare state as we know it, wrapped up in the cosy, ‘fear not’ language of localism (he skips over how having my local school run by a multi-national with a HQ in a different time-zone serves to increase accountability, but there you go).

Rising from the gut, the instinctive reaction from many who describe themselves as being a bit to the left of things is to condemn and oppose. And quite right too.

Never before has there been such an assault on our public institutions. They are correct to ask what this gross social experiment will actually mean, particularly for those that actually rely on the services that will be thrown into the free-market melting pot. Hurrah for those that swim, but what about those that don’t?

Beyond this, as the bile settles, there is a greater challenge for those who disagree with the Conservatives. It involves the acceptance of a grim reality, imagining a scenario in the not too distant future where Cameron gets his way; the presumption that public services are public is completely inverted so that private ownership of schools (and hospitals etc) is the norm.

What then? Opponents could stick to the barricades and man them to the end. The big worry for me is that, while flags are being waved and tubs being thumped, the corporates (and the creationists) move in and sweep up all the schools it likes the look of and those that don’t fit the bill are left to wither and die.

Perhaps a wiser course of action is to not only oppose, but also to conspire: what if, when these schools are placed on the open market, they were taken over by parent and teachers and run not as free schools, but still as part of a maintained sector. That, at least, is the suggestion made here.

Contentious stuff, no doubt, as it effectively means engaging with a much-despised Conservative plan for schools. However, if Cameron does get his way, those who believe in the values and principles of state education may have to face this unpalatable truth.

The result of Cameron’s plan, in effect, is big society by coercion, making a mockery of voluntary local action being the catalyst for change. Yet, when the state is forcibly removed from education, parents and teachers may have to fill the vacuum; unless, of course, we are happy to see the letters ‘PLC’ on our local school signs.

Gove’s ‘Free School’ dossier is bad science

I’m a big fan of Ben Goldacre, the journalist who sniffs out ‘bad science‘ and exposes the way research is misused to justify ridiculous claims. He should take a look at Michael Gove’s dodgy dossier which sets out the case Free Schools. Buried right down the bottom of the page, after the press release, is the Department for Education’s interestingly titled ‘myth-buster‘ on Free Schools. It’s an unusual mix of hand-picked international comparisons, the Department’s own statistics, apparently solid research and some seriously questionable evidence.

Unfortunately what first grabs the eye is the sheer inconsistency of font (and font size) – it’s worth reading for this alone. How did such a sloppy document – on a subject so important – make it into the public domain? It suggests this document was chucked together with some haste – a blur of Googling and cutting and pasting – by a bureaucrat with only rudimentary computing skills: Times New Roman here, Arial there, a touch of size 12, then a smidge of 13. (It’s ironic that funds from the school technology budget are being diverted to pay for the ‘free schools’, perhaps they could be best spent showing our friends at the DfE how to use Word. If a student in my class had done this, I would have done my ‘teacher-frown’ and asked him to go and do it properly. We have standards, you see. Or maybe it’s an act of sabotage by an anti-free school pen-pusher – perhaps we should be grateful).

On the substance, the document does a remarkable job of conflating ‘Academy School’ with ‘Free School’, to the point where the two different school structures are apparently interchangeable. It does the same for ‘Charter School’ – the autonomous schools in the U.S. – and the U.K version of ‘Free School’ (there are of course similarities but international comparisons should be heavily qualified and, in this document, they are not).

This conflation allows the DfE to claim that ‘Free schools are in demand’ because a) Charter Schools in the U.S. are over-subscribed, b) On average there are 2.6 applications a day for Academy status (in the U.K.) and, c) Polling by the Confederation of Swedish Business found that Swedish parents scored free schools more highly than their public equivalents (this last one, incidentally, comes from a ‘Policy Exchange’ report – a right-wing think tank). Is it just me or does that fail to convince?

Elsewhere in the document, a positive report by the National Audit Office into attendance at Academy schools results in a claim that ‘Free Schools improve discipline‘; statistics which show there are more ‘free school meal children’ in Academy schools are used to ‘debunk’ the myth that ‘Free Schools will only benefit the well-off’; we are reassured that ‘Free Schools‘ won’t neglect SEN pupils because Academies have a higher proportion of SEN children than the national average.

One, two, all or none of these findings may be meaningful in some other context, but one things for certain: they do not make the case, as DfE is seeking to do, that ‘free schools are in demand/improve behaviour/improve attendance’. It is simply not possible to say the introduction of one variable (an Academy school, or a Charter School in a different country) will result in the same effects when an different variable is applied (a Free School). This is pretty shoddy stuff for such a weighty topic. Imagine a new medical intervention being introduced based on such an amateurish, convoluted evidence base.

Throughout, selective data from the U.S. is used to ‘prove’ that free schools in the UK will be a force for public good, as if our social, cultural and economic contexts are identical. Ignoring the research into education published by RAND (best known for military research and the nuclear strategy, known fittingly as MAD: mutually assured destruction), here’s just one example of why this is not the case:

I took a look at one of the research documents cited. This one was put together by a team including staff from Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania. The methodology seemed sound, it was well-written and claims were cautiously made; I have no complaints about the research.

But when the researchers set out what distinguished Charter Schools from their public school equivalents they found the former were effective because: they required students to wear a school uniform; students took on average two ‘evaluations’ each year to track student progress; parents of students in Charter Schools sign a ‘parent contract’; teachers get paid for taking on additional duties.

This, they claim, contrasts them with public schools and hence raises standards.

What’s the problem? Well, based on a sample of one (my school): we have a school uniform; our pupils take three (not two) internal evaluations each year; parents sign a ‘parent contract’; and teachers get paid for taking on additional responsibilities. Moreover, this is common practice in schools in the UK. So, in these cases, Charter Schools have fixed a problem that simply does not exist in the UK.

This does leave the other distinctive features of Charter Schools: longer school hours and a longer school week; and performance pay for teachers. That’s the nub of the issue: train more teachers so schools can provide a longer day and pay teachers well when they are successful. This should be focus for the debate, the main attraction: more quality teacher time for children.

Free schools are a side-show. If they want to persuade us otherwise, the message for the Department for Education is: must try harder.

Gove forgets to mention the ‘c’ word

I’ve been a bit unkind to Michael Gove in a previous blog (or two), but he turned up a few surprises in his first major speech since becoming Education Secretary. Addressing the National College for Leadership of School, his message of greater school autonomy and more power for the top bods was well-designed to win over his audience (others were impressed too, such as Conor Ryan, former adviser to David Blunkett).

It was a substantial speech and there’s much to pick over (and – gulp – a fair bit to agree with). His words were well-crafted and pleasantly lacking in endless criticism of what went before (Gove seems to do ‘new politics’ much better than his Lib-Dem colleagues – he could teach Clegg and Alexander a thing or two).

No mention of ‘free schools’ (two reasons for this: one, he was keeping his powder dry for today’s announcements; and, two, businesses setting up schools is completely at odds with his message that ‘Headteachers know best’, so he must have wisely decided to keep schtum).

But the biggest surprise was the complete absence of the word ‘cut’ (or ‘deficit’) from his speech. It seems his reforms are taking place in a vacuum, shielded from the grim fiscal realities every other Con-Dem Minister is trotting out to justify wince-making cuts.

Refreshing stuff, in many ways. But odd.

This lack of economic context places Gove out of step with his Con-Dem colleagues. And David Willetts, in particular, who has earnestly begun his task of cost-cutting, with some painful cuts to higher education and talk not of the benefits but the ‘burden’ of providing university places.

So while Willetts is busily pruning expectations, Gove seems to be doing exactly the reverse.

He (Gove that is) says that difficult economic times are no reason to ‘scale down ambitions’; he draws attention to the ‘brain-boom’ emerging from Chinese and India universities, and suggests we need to match them; he waxes lyrical about US Charter schools where children from the ghetto are getting to elite universities; and he wants ‘more teachers’ to get masters and doctorates.

All this suggests more university places – and therefore (significantly) more investment, not less.

This is a bit of a mystery. If I was Danny Alexander I would be straight on the phone to ask Gove: what gives? And if he can’t get through, I expect it’ll be because David Willetts got there first.

Gibb v Hattie: The Verdict

After Nick Gibb’s pounding at the hands of Professor John Hattie in Round 1 of the ‘Improving Schools Challenge’, its time for a more sober analysis of the other strands of the School Minister’s ‘vision’ for schools.

In an interview with Mike Baker, Gibb identifies certain ‘imperatives’ which he expects schools to follow (it’s not too difficult to spot the tension here between a stated aim of freeing up schools to teach how they want and, at the same time, prescribing what teachers must do).

Alongside ‘setting by ability’ (which has been addressed in ‘Round 1′), Gibb’s ‘imperatives’ are: first, for schools to adhere to a policy of ‘strict school uniform’ and, second, for teachers to teach reading using the ‘synthetic phonics’ method.

One wonders at the process by which these seemingly unconnected ideas have become central to Gibb’s world-view. Even taken together they fail to constitute anything approaching a vision for primary education. But, let’s put that to one side, and deal with them on face value and scrutinise their worth using the ‘Hattie test’.

(For those who can’t face reading my last blog, you have my sympathies. Put simply, this is a ‘Hattie test’ : the Professor from Auckland analysed – meta-analysed to be precise – over 50,000 different studies into almost every imaginable area of school life. This analysis was then computed to give something called ‘effect size’ which tells you whether a given variable – e.g. teachers adopting a particular questioning style – is worth doing or not. It’s very clever, meticulous work, giving some clarity to the confusion and complexity of classroom life and the still-intriguing process of learning).

Let’s start with school uniform: does a crisp shirt and a throat-throttling school tie help children to learn?

The evidence here mainly comes from the United States which has traditionally had a more relaxed approach to school attire. President Clinton introduced a rule allowing public schools to require students to wear uniform. Interestingly, not many did (about one in four), but enough to carry out a large-scale analysis of achievement and attitudinal data. And the conclusion?

Bad news for Gibb: school uniform had no effect on academic achievement in elementary school and a ‘significant negative effect’ in high school; no effect on attendance, or self-esteem or behaviour incidents. Overall, the impact was ‘close to zero’ (keep in mind that, the way ‘effect size’ is calculated, almost anything has an effect – even, say, a teacher standing still, smiling. So, a score ‘close to zero’ is really, really bad). Hattie describes highly-visible ideas, which are shown to achieve nothing, as ‘coats of paint’; look pretty, but pointless (assuming your measure is improving academic achievement).

So: round 2 to Hattie.

Round 3? Synthetic phonics (a process of teaching reading by breaking down words into the smallest sounds and ‘blending’ them to assist reading; children are then taught these sounds as part of a planned programme, building their knowledge of phonics day-by-day and/or week-by-week. Typically, synthetic phonics is used in this country very early in a child’s school life – infant school – and as an intervention for struggling readers later in school).

This has been an area of some contention, after it was introduced with much enthusiasm by the last Government. It was presented as a panacea; critics suggested the research base was weak, arguing the most effective method for teaching reading involved the development of different strategies (e.g. reading a whole book, using visual clues to predict words, learning words by sight – as well as a phonetics etc), rather than the adoption of a single strategy as the way to read.

But does synthetic phonics work?

Gibb is in unusual territory here: he’s backed up by the science! Hattie is enthusiastic about phonics instruction and concludes it is ‘powerful in the process of learning to read’.

The only reason this is not a clear win for Gibb is that nowhere does Hattie argue that ‘synthetic phonics’ should be used in isolation. So, teachers still must use different strategies to encourage reading (not least enthusing about books and encouraging children to love reading). But, let’s give the man some credit: Gibb ties Round 3 with Hattie.

It looks like the message from Hattie to Gibb is this: put less emphasis on ‘setting’ children, it doesn’t make a difference; loosen the old school tie, it’s purely cosmetic; and keep going with the synthetic phonics, but it’s not a panacea.

To finish, one other of Gibb’s ‘imperatives’ is worth a menion. Gibb, believe it or not, thinks children should stand when a teacher enters the room. In his meticulous study of the effectiveness of interventions which have an impact on educational achievement, Professor John Hattie makes no mention of ‘standing up’ or, indeed, ‘sitting down’.

This could be because he thinks it is of no educational significance. Or he could be saving his really big, knock-out ideas for a later volume. You decide.

The ‘Improving Schools Challenge’: Nick Gibb v John Hattie – Round 1

Ladies and Gentleman – welcome to the first round of the ‘Improving Schools Challenge!’ This is no physical fight, but a battle of minds: who has the best ideas to improve schools? Lets meet our contestants:

In the Blue corner: put your hands together for former accountant, Conservative MP for Bognor and now Schools Minister, Mr Nick ‘The Disciplinator’ Gibb. He will be fighting tonight using arguments based on hunches, prejudice and a desire to precisely replicate the grammar school education he experienced way back when.

In the Impartial corner: a big welcome to the little-known Kiwi boffin, all the way from the University of Auckland, Professor John ‘The Synthesiser’ Hattie. He will be counter-punching with arguments based on sound research, an analysis of 50,000 studies involving millions of children and the objective application of reason and evidence.

Who will win?

Please settle down for Round 1.

Nick Gibb starts the battle of the brains with an interesting proposition. Drawing on a tactic from a previous fight (on the Politics Show), he dives in with:

“I visit schools every week and I’ve seen some very high quality comprehensives in very deprived parts of Britain…and what they do is they set their children by ability so that children are taught in similar ability group, whereas in a lot of comprehensives under this government, only about 40 % of lessons are set. So that’s a key priority…then you’ll see the grammar school type of education existing in the comprehensive [schools].”

Hattie looks stunned. He never thought he’d have the old “put ‘em in sets” argument chucked his way. He reels, turns and reaches for…what’s this? Yes, it looks like Hattie is going to go straight for Gibb’s weak spot and use empirical evidence.

‘The Synthesiser’ goes technical. He says that you can measure something called the ‘effect size’: this tells you, in precise terms, the impact of almost anything on a child’s achievement. He fronts up to Gibb: ‘I’ve got it all in my locker: whether giving homework makes a difference, or the size of the school, or teaching phonics, or the degree of parental support. You name it!’

Now it’s Gibb that looks dazed. He digs deep, drawing on his experience of the handful of schools he has strolled round. He swipes wildly: ‘Some were really good’, he says, ‘and they had their children in sets – so let’s have children working in sets everywhere. Take that, logic-man!’

Hattie knows what to do. He goes for the kill. Calmly, he reels off the findings of over 300 studies (carried out by clever people who know what they are talking about) into whether grouping by ability works.

He unleashes a fierce flurry of blows: the overall effects of grouping by ability are ‘minimal’ and in some cases ‘profoundly negative’; across three ability groups (top, middle and bottom) ‘no-one profits’; those in low-ability groups can have their educational experience ‘deadened’ and, as a result, are ‘alienated’; this negatively affects ‘low-income’ groups more than those on higher-incomes.

What matters, says Hattie, is the quality of teaching, not how children are grouped: it’s the teachers, stupid.

Gibb stumbles back to his corner, clutching his old school tie, mumbling ‘Well, I was in top set and it worked for me.’

Looks like it’s Round 1 to ‘The Synthesiser’, Professor John Hattie!

Will ‘The Disciplinator’ recover?

Round 2 coming up soon…

(If you would like to read Professor John Hattie in the unfettered form, his extraordinarily comprehensive findings can be found in his book ‘Visible Learning’. Not as read-able as a Grisham I’ll admit, but it’s a gem all the same).

Only business will profit from free schools

When it comes to ‘free schools’, there seems to be a pretty significant difference of opinion between the Schools Minister, Nick Gibb, and his boss, Education Secretary, Michael Gove. Between them they can’t seem to decide whether schools should be able to make a profit or not.

‘Free schools’ are Gove’s big, bold – and ever-so-slightly bonkers – idea for reforming education. The plan is to allow parents, teachers and businesses to set up their own schools, resulting (supposedly) in a more diverse education sector. If Gove has his way, free schools will emerge in their hundreds over the next few years.

There are some major flaws in all this.

I set out some of the arguments against free schools here, but to cut a long story short: free schools don’t raise standards; they increase social segregation; they lower the standard of school buildings (do you have a problem with your child being educated in an office block? Nick Gibb doesn’t); they cost a lot of money; and they divert resources away from existing schools.

So, I hear you ask, what’s the point?

I have a theory. Free schools are not really about education at all. They are part of a revolution the Con-Dems are planning. And the revolution is this: profit.

Many Conservatives have long looked at the state with a sense of antipathy bordering on rage. They are now ably supported by the Orange-Book Lib-Dem brigades, who are shaped by their hostility towards the state – particularly where it provides universal public services funded from the public pocket.

They look at schools and think: couldn’t we spend a bit less? Isn’t there money to be made in those classrooms?

Now, the Con-Dems are being cute. They know they weren’t elected in order to dismantle the state. So they are engaged in a concerted effort to do two things: first, denigrate what the state does, with endless talk of ‘waste’ and ‘inefficiency’; and, second, dress up the alternative in the seductive language of ‘choice’, or ‘freedom’, or ‘fairness’.

That’s exactly what they’ve done with free schools, arguing this gives parents the ‘choice’ to set up a free school. I have yet to see any published research or survey which suggests there are anything more than a handful of parents who would want to do such a thing. Most, I expect, would consider the idea with incredulity, baffled at the idea their lives are so time-rich they have the scope to add ‘set up and run a school’ to their daily to-do list. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

I’m more persuaded by the idea that charitable foundations may run some schools, particularly faith-groups (which is a whole different blog), but the reality is that the only institutions interested in moving into education in a big way are businesses. They would find the economies of scale appealing (a thousand schools means you could negotiate some real cut-price catering contracts), but they would only be interested if they could make money.

And this is where it gets interesting.

Nick Gibb, has said quite clearly – unequivocally – that companies should not be able to make a profit from schools. In fact he has said profit-making schools take vital funds out of education and move it straight into a companies bulging balance sheet. You can read the full interview here, but these were his exact words:

“The trouble with allowing companies to make a profit from providing schools is that it take money out of the education system, significant sums of money out. We want to make sure that all that money is retained within [the education system] and if it [profit] were necessary, fine but it’s not necessary…”.

The difficulty is that Michael Gove has said the complete opposite. He doesn’t have a problem with schools being taken over by schools and run at a profit. As he says himself, he is after all ‘a Conservative.’

I find myself thinking: I agree with Nick.

But there’s only going to be one winner isn’t there? No doubt Michael Gove will have his way.

The slow death of state education has begun. It will be allowed to wither on the vine, while it’s made easier and easier for business to get their foot through the door.

So, profit-making schools here we come! And, remember this: if you don’t like it, you have a choice – set up your own. Then if it all goes wrong, it’ll be your fault. Nice, eh?

Should an accountant be in charge of schools?

Ministerial appointments are a mysterious process. There’s no job advertisement; no person specification; no interview panel ticking boxes and rating each candidate’s suitability; no expectant wait for a letter in the post. As a result, they can turn up some surprises.

Try this for size: how about an accountant at KPMG ending up in charge of schools policy? Ladies and gentleman, meet Nick Gibb.

How does such a thing happen?

A Ministerial appointment is a deal. Those hopeful of an appointment have to cobble together a good-dose of political capital, earned over time by unstinting loyalty to party or leader (or both). Prior experience doesn’t do any harm – either as Shadow Minister or, even better, in the real world – but it’s anything but essential (Danny Alexander, the Lib-Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is an example of this. He has about as much economic or financial experience as you would expect a PR man to have: next to none).

But, does this matter?

Would we have better Government if there was a clearer correlation between real-life experience and Ministerial responsibility?

Or are we better served by Ministers who are able to weigh-up issues coolly and dispassionately, making decisions based on wider interests beyond a particular field?

The answer, surely, is that we need a bit of both. A true Ministerial talent can embody real-life experience combined with a good, analytical brain. But they are few and far between (come back Estelle Morris!).

This Government (like most in living memory) is skewed towards Ministers with no obvious, substantive experience which is directly connected to their Ministerial responsibilities. Of course, there are exceptions (please, please come back Estelle!), but not enough to disprove the rule.

This takes us back to the Conservative Schools Minister. I’d never heard of Nick Gibb until a month ago, when the Conservative MP for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton was given the job. I don’t hold that against him: there’s a whole new batch of political faces to get to know (and love?). But I do wonder why he was picked for the job – what’s the match between 15 years number-crunching at KPMG and the complexity of the classroom?

I’ll give any man (or woman) a chance, but he seems to have contributed little so far.

I expect he is busying himself behind the scenes, but his public pronouncements have so far been limited to a convoluted statement on the primary curriculum , a message on tackling absenteeism which is completely devoid of ideas and that seems about it. Oh, beg pardon, he wrote to Polly Toynbee too, explaining she’d got her wires crossed (I don’t know if Polly replied – Mr Gibb addressed the letter ‘Dear Sir’ so I expect she didn’t bother).

While his reticence is just about understandable (it is early days I suppose), what is really worrying is when someone such as Nick Gibb – with no experience whatsoever of teaching or school management – starts to pronounce on the detail of how teachers should teach. On this front, he has some pretty unequivocal rules – children should be taught in sets, for example, schools should strictly enforce school uniform and reading should be taught using ‘synthetic phonics’. A wish-list would could have been chosen almost entirely at random, it seems.

I will come back to Gibb’s pedagogical ideas in a later blog, but my concern is this: a skilled teacher walks into a school and sees a million different things that are happening to make the school day tick over. Some are almost imperceptible to the untrained eye, honed to perfection over countless hours in the classroom but hard to pick up. It explains the myth that some teachers are considered ‘naturals’, when the chances are they have worked tirelessly – through endless trial and error – to become good at what they do.

Someone who knows nothing of schools can walk in and think: ‘ah, this school does well, look at the children’s smart uniforms…I know…every school should have smart uniforms!’ (This, to be clear, is not an argument against uniforms – just a warning against the crude over-simplification of ‘what works’ in schools).

Imagine a parallel world where a Health Secretary – who had previously been, let’s say, a chartered surveyor – takes a glance into a surgical theatre, sees something they like the look of and then starts to wax-lyrical and shape policy based on their half-baked understanding of surgical procedures.

It wouldn’t happen, would it? So, why is education any different?

Perhaps it is time for a teacher to be Schools Minister – now, wouldn’t that be interesting…

Free schools – the case against

The Lib-Cons are putting ‘free schools’ slap-bang in the middle of their education plans for the first term (although this agenda is much more ‘Con’, than ‘Lib’ – Michael Gove’s in the driving seat). The plan – based on a Swedish idea – is to open up the management of schools to parents, charities and businesses, with new management structures shaking things up, bringing nothing short of a ‘schools revolution’.

Will it work?

The answer of course is: who knows? But if I was pushed (not too hard), I would say ‘no’. In fact, push (just a little harder) then I would say free could be disastrous.

I’ve had a look around some of the recent commentary on free schools. This, it seems, is the case against:

1. Where’s the money coming from for free schools?

Budgets are tight – and are only going to get tighter as the Lib-Con squeeze on spending continues in the months ahead. So, in this time of frugality, how are free schools going to be funded? They will incur capital costs, as well as revenue to pay for teachers, teaching assistants, cooks and all the other people it takes to run a school. The evidence from Sweden shows a ‘significant increase’ in costs in order to set the schools up. After a decade of free schools, areas with a high proportion of free schools had a higher than average cost-per-pupil.

This doesn’t look good for the long-term, but what about next year? The Institute for Fiscal Studies explains that free schools are to be funded from the Building Schools for the Future budget. Whether or not you think is a wise re-allocation of funds, this money-stream is due to run dry in 2011.

So, given that free schools are going to find it impossible to get going in time for the new school year in 2010, where’s the money coming to pay for them from 2011 onwards?

To hazard a guess, free schools will be paid for from a re-allocation of existing school budgets – this will mean front-line cuts coming to a school near you.

2. Will free schools raise standards?

This is a real sticking point, but it’s questionable whether free schools raise standards. The ‘Trends in International Maths and Science Study’ ranks England eight places higher than Sweden. Where free schools have raised standards, critics suggest it’s because they’ve creamed off the best students which in turn gives them better results.

Before the election, a certain Liberal Democrat leader described free schools as a ‘disaster for standards’. On this one, I agree with Nick.

3. Do parents really want to set up their own schools?

Apparently, the number of parent groups who have shown an interest in starting their own school has ‘surged’ to 550. Now, call me an old cynic, but that number seems ridiculously low. What’s the ratio between the number of people who phone to find out about a job and those who actually apply – maybe one in ten? More pertinently – how many actually get the job – one in fifty? I struggle to see this ‘surge’ translating into more than a handful of free schools, certainly not the ‘hundreds’ anticipated by Michael Gove.

Parents – in any great number – simply don’t want to run their own school. Most find the idea preposterous. Sure, there will be very active parents here and there but that will be it: actually running a school has very limited appeal to parents (where’s the time in any given day?).

Advocates will no doubt wheel out Toby Young who always seems to pop up at this point. He seems a nice chap and makes a good fist of arguing for free schools. But do you remember the Sinclair C5? To me, Toby Young is the Clive Sinclair of the free school movement: a likeable, enthusiastic advocate for a product that is ultimately doomed to failure. Like the C5, free-schools will prompt some head-scratching and the words: ‘but why would I want one of those?’

4. How will free schools help struggling schools?

Let me state the obvious: schools exist. They may be good, bad or indifferent but they are there, lurking on a street corner near you. If a school is struggling – let’s say a change of Head has meant some upheaval (or, indeed, a free school has poached all the good teachers): is it not wiser to help the school, rather than to turn on our collective heels and set up another new one two doors down? What happens to the existing school? More importantly: what happens to the children in the school if the free school can’t take them because it’s still being set up (or is full). Are they left to wither in a school that is having all it’s resources slowly stripped away? I can’t see how this will do anything but increase the gap between the educational-haves and the have-nots.

5. Who will get into free schools (and who won’t!)?

If free schools have more control over their admissions policies, there’s the risk that the difficult, challenging children (you know – the naughty ones) will be kept out. Isn’t there? What about children with special educational needs? Or children who speak English as a second language? Where is the incentive (or the requirement) to provide a decent education for these children? Where will they go? To the local school that’s been there all along; a school that is slowly being run into the ground because – guess what – the free school down the road gets better exam results.

6. Are the Swedes advocates for Swedish free schools?

Remarkably, even the Swedes aren’t that keen on the Swedish system. Their education minister, Bertil Ostberg, said the schools were a failure and has warned Britain not to introduce them. He said: ‘We have actually seen a fall in the quality of Swedish schools since the free schools were introduced.’

Oh dear – does anyone agree with Michael?

7. Do we want schools to make a profit?

There are those who are hugely in favour of free schools. Big business, both here in the UK and overseas, are currently salivating at the prospect of making money from our schools system. One provider has said they would be keen to get involved, if they could run ‘thousands’ of schools.

Do we really want our schools to make money? Are there mechanisms in place to prevent the curriculum being unduly influenced – nutrition lessons brought to you by Nestle, anyone? Businesses will want to cut costs – less qualified teachers would be much cheaper: is this what we want?

8. What happens if – when – a free school fails?

Big business – let’s call this one Muck-Ed – sets up a chain of free schools. All goes well until a subsidiary, completely unconnected to their education business, hits the rocks. Muck-Ed needs to take drastic action, so closes its schools.

Who picks up the pieces? Where do the children go? Yup, back to the local school we go – the one that’s been there all along.

So: that’s the case against, or some of the case at least. It doesn’t look good. It seems crackers to put so much energy into a system that doesn’t seem to have worked. I’m not sure there’s much of an appetite for free schools – certainly not compared to people who just want a decent state school nearby: so, shouldn’t we focus on this instead?

There is of course one, guaranteed, evidence-based, sure-fire, relatively cheap way of improving schools in this country. That’s for my next blog…

Is there room for parents in the ‘Big Society’?

I’ve been trying to understand what David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ is all about and, finally, I thought I’d grasped it. It’s about people taking charge of their own lives, having a bigger say in how their local services are run and – where they wish to – running things themselves. At least, I thought it was, until I looked at the Lib-Con proposals for Academy schools.

You could say (and I have) that the driving force behind the ‘Big Society’ is an ideological one – the Tories and the right of the Liberal Democrat party don’t like the state and want to pay less taxes – rather than a genuine belief in harnessing people power to improve public services. My concern, set out in a previous blog, is that the ‘Big Society’ is more of a mirage than any kind of miracle cure.

But, for now, let’s take the ‘Big Society’ at face value as something radical designed to put people (not politicians) at the heart of things. In this case, let’s say ‘the heart of things’ is the local primary school.

The Lib-Con coalition agreement is big on ‘parent power’ – they get a mention four times in the short section on schools. It suggests throughout that parents are right at the heart of educational reform.

So, you would assume, in a ‘Big Society’,that parents will have a say in how their school is run; that they would – at least – be asked their opinion before their child’s school underwent anything approaching a radical upheaval. Wouldn’t you?

Not according to the new Academies Bill.

Fiona Millar has been a long-standing critic of the Academy programme (and a very active supporter of the state school system) and she has highlighted some worrisome provisions in the Lib-Con Academies Bill, particularly the complete lack of engagement with parents.

I had a good look at the ‘Explanatory Notes’ which accompany the Academies Bill to see if Millar’s claim were right. Probe not too deeply and you find the mechanism for a school becoming an Academy. Here it is in all it’s simplicity: the Head and the Governing Body of an ‘Outstanding’ school write to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of State writes back to say ‘go ahead’.

That’s it – an exchange of letters.

No need to consult with parents, let alone secure their agreement. Technically, a school wouldn’t even need to inform parents before applying for Academy statues. This seems at odds with the ‘Big Society’ – I thought we, the people, were in charge?

Yes, governing bodies have parent representatives, but such a significant change shouldn’t be agreed behind closed doors. Why should other non-governor parents be excluded from this process? Are their views unimportant? What if they object – what mechanisms do they have to challenge the Academy application? I expect they have two choices – move their child to another school (with all the disruption that involves) or, ahem, set up their own free school.

The other major fault-line in this is the removal of local councils from the process. As with parents, there is no requirement for a school to consult with (or even inform) their local authority. When a school becomes an Academy local authorities are ‘instructed’ by the Secretary of State to immediately cease maintenance and ‘control’ of the school. You can read all this for yourself – see the Explanatory Notes for the Bill here.

Whatever your view of local councils, they are local entities, run by elected local councillors, who often live in the locality (forgive the repetition – I’m just trying to establish a point), so it seems counter to the idea of a ‘Big Society’ to establish a stronger relationship between the centre (Whitehall) and the school, rather than ‘the local’ and the school.

This looks like a deliberate move, to help the Conservatives by-pass Labour-run councils. In other words, it’s about politics, not about local democracy and decision-making. It will be interesting to see how Liberal Democrat councils respond to this side-swipe (it’s also important to note the pejorative use of the word ‘control’ when describe the relationship between local authorities and schools; it contains no hint of the job good local authorities do to support and improve schools).

If the Academies Bill is anything to go by the ‘Big Society’ has got very little to do with people (or parent) power. Looks like I’m back where I started; still confused about the ‘Big Society’!