So the free schools charade continues. Forget about the ‘chaos’ at the Al-Madinah free school, where schools inspectorate Ofsted had to create a new ‘dysfunctional’ category just to score it within its framework. Disregard the debacle of the IES Breckland school in Suffolk, where pupils reading ability actually went backwards. Worry not either about the soon to be closed Durham Free School, engulfed by allegations of creationism being taught as scientific fact. No, what matters here is our ‘sphinx without a riddle’ prime minister and his desperate search for something approaching a political purpose. That he should now alight upon expanding Michael Gove’s free school programme, with all its waste and failure, only serves to highlight the paucity of his vision for Britain.
Make no mistake, five hundred new free schools would be a disaster for our children’s education. Let’s deal first with the smoke and mirrors. For yesterday’s announcement has absolutely nothing to do with school standards. No matter how many reports – with dubious sample sizes – the Tories in-house think-tanks knock up, the truth is there is nowhere near enough evidence to support claims about competition driving up achievement throughout the schools system. If evidence about competition and standards is what we want, far better to look to Sweden’s for-profit model – once so beloved by Michael Gove he labelled it ‘the future’. Alas for education’s free marketeers, in the latest batch of the OECD’s respected PISA international comparisons Sweden fell far more than any other nation in reading and maths – with only Malaysia’s performance in science preventing an unenviable clean sweep. This capped off an incredible twelve year tumble down the rankings with Skolverket – the Swedish equivalent of Ofsted – finding that attainment inequality is rising too. Plainly, untrammelled competition has not worked there. Why on earth does the prime minister believe it could work here?
Similarly, this is not about innovation. A rising school-age population means the next government will have to provide thousands of new school places in areas of need. This is a golden opportunity to rethink some of the fundamentals of our industrial model of schooling, recasting them anew for the advancing digital age. For that reason the Labour party positively clamours to encourage teachers, parents, educationalists, social enterprises, charities and universities to set-up innovative schools as part of a new parent-led academy programme. Especially in the coastal towns and coalfield communities where we urgently need to address white working class underachievement. All we ask is that these schools commit to hiring qualified teachers and are accountable to local initiatives to improve standards in their respective communities. And that, given the baby boom and pressured public finances, any new school is built where there is an actual need for places.
For ultimately here is the rub: you cannot be both a deficit hawk and a free schools enthusiast. Yesterday’s announcement must come with the same fiscal health warnings as the prime minister’s lunatic conference pledge to deliver £7bn worth of unfunded tax cuts. Such fantasy economics already mean the Tories cannot protect the schools budget in real terms. Now, during a demographic crisis, they want to build new schools in areas where there is a surplus of places too. In this parliament alone more than £240m was wasted in such areas, meaning less money to halt a 200 per cent rise in infant class sizes over thirty. Yet that is small beer compared with the damage that could be done if yesterday’s expansion gets the green light.
Labour has a far better plan for schools standards – capping infant class sizes at thirty, raising teaching standards and opening innovative new schools where there is a need for places. Because of our sensible approach to balancing the books we can afford to revive Sure Start, expand free childcare, transform technical education and guarantee a word-class apprenticeship to every young person that gets the grades too. In contrast, the prime minister and his ideas-bereft education secretary have nothing left to offer. The intellectual cupboard is bare and this fiscally negligent reheat must be seen as a sign of their growing desperation. Labour is now unmistakably winning on education.
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Tristram Hunt MP is shadow secretary of state for education
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It’s rare that I agree with the thrust of a Progress article, but, in terms of free schools (if not academy policy), Hunt is bang on the money here. Free schools represent an enormous waste of resources and, from a place planning perspective are a complete nightmare, as, like the proverbial garden weed, they can pop up anywhere, unwanted, un-needed, and draining the lifeblood out of existing schools.
But there the praise stops. Hunt then goes on to praise ‘parent-led’ or business-sponsored academies, which are free schools under another name. Academies may, in small numbers have a role in providing the diverse provision we need in the UK, but, together with New Labour apparatchiks, they are the universal panacea and the beginning and end of educational provision. Whereas the practice is very, very different.
I may have missed it but i don’t think Tristram actually mentions businesses unless you group social enterprises and universities as businesses. I’m still wary of academies but as an ex-school governor I have see brilliant maintained schools and some where ‘uninspired’ would be an overstatement. I want a system that would for example allow the development of a creative arts based education like the emilia reggio system in pre and primary education.
I don’t actually think there is inflexibility in terms of the existing system (or even the situation that existed prior to academisation) that would not allow the development of a creative arts based education like the “Emilia Reggio” system you quote. Nice though this is, I also have concerns that we are tinkering around the margins of the system on pet or interesting projects, rather than concerning ourselves with delivering mainstream education and the many, many places required. We have the real situation arising in some areas where the majority of local schools are academies, none are interested in expanding (heaven forfend they might have to take some low achieving children), and the Council – who ultimately have the responsibility for procuring places but no powers to actually deliver them) has to go around with a begging bowl to academy providers or free schools, rather than build their own or expand existing successful schools. This introduces a considerable lag into the system, as well as no guarantee that the provider will actually deliver what you want or what is needed locally.