Frank Furedi, the professor of sociology at University of Kent, is great. He’s written some great stuff about academic freedom, risk averseness, bureaucracy, distrust of parents, and even climate change.
But his latest essay, about why throwing money at education won’t make it better, doesn’t quite join things up.
He’s right that fancy buildings and facilities don’t make education better. He’s right that government meddling in education removes the education in favour of politics. He’s right that the Conservatives will be just as dismal as Labour. But…
Those who support the Conservative Party’s policy of educational choice point to various successful schools that are run by groups of parents or private educators. There is no doubt that schools freed from centralised control and run by highly motivated parents or educators can achieve impressive results. Over the past century, numerous experimental projects have shown that committed parents and teachers can succeed in outperforming the mainstream school sector. However, their achievements are not testament to the virtues of ‘choice’ or the workings of the educational market, but rather to the enthusiasm and involvement of a self-selected group of concerned individuals.
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In principle there is nothing wrong with private education. Many of the institutions in the UK’s independent education sector (though not all of them) provide a high standard of education. In part, their achievements are a result of their ability to insulate themselves from the worst impacts of government intervention. But it is not their private status that guarantees their success.
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The antidote to the centralised state control of education is not to privatise education, but to establish a public school system freed from bureaucratic influence.
It is the very private nature of private schools that frees them from centralised control and bureaucratic influence. I don’t believe you can ever get that as long as the money comes from the government because it will always give them an excuse to meddle. So yes, private education doesn’t guarantee anything because it can theoretically be poor if it’s not done by the right people, but it works the other way too. Really motivated groups of parents can achieve anything. Marginally motivated groups of parents will be scuppered by rules and regulations and meddling. Being good at educating doesn’t guarantee anything as long as the government gets a say in what you do.
The problem is too deep to be fixed by some new educational policy that gives schools more freedom. We need to get the government out of the education business completely.
http://www.brianmicklethwait.com/index.php/weblog/the_great_global_warming_swindle_debate_now_begins/