February 9, 2010
Not in praise of…Tory Education Policy
Last year I blogged concerns regarding Tory plans to introduce Swedish-style “free schools”.
The Tories seem to think that introducting “competition” into the education system will drive up standards.
Presumably in the same way that “competition” in the artificial internal market of the NHS drove up standards so far that record waiting lists by 1997 meant that Labour had to undertake collosal spending increases to get the health service back on its feet.
Yet word now comes from Sweden itself that free schools don’t drive up standards across the board, and are leaving the most vulnerable children behind. Don’t listen to me, here’s the BBC:
More at Left Foot Forward.
Swedish Schools: Show me the market! « Left Outside said,
February 10, 2010 at 8:04 am
[...] Schools: Show me the market! Its nice to see the Tories screw up (again), but it is distressing to see fail what may have been a promising avenue for reforming [...]
Dan said,
February 11, 2010 at 5:49 pm
You might be interested in this blog post; seems to refute the BBC and left foot forward pretty well: http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/2010/02/does-swedish-model-actually-work.html
Ireland and Lib Dem Soul Searching « Bad Conscience said,
July 20, 2010 at 7:32 am
[...] funds for his Free Schools experiment which will advantage the upper middle classes, if it manages to help anyone at all. Osborne’s hard-cutting emergency budget is going to impact disproportionately on the poorest in [...]