The Financial Times supports school choice 1

Matthew Sinclair Better Government

It is great to see the Financial Times take up the case for school choice, as exists in Sweden. Taking schools out of the hands of politicians and giving control back to parents and teachers:

"Despite endless cant about “choice”, the UK educational system stifles competition. In most areas of the country, local schools are closely controlled by a single local educational authority. They are cartels that actively prevent schools from competing.

In Sweden, good schools can expand and anyone can set one up. Both are technically possible in the UK, but local government rules advise against them if they mean more unfilled places at local schools. Banning the creation of extra places guarantees that children at bad schools have nowhere to go and stamps out competition.

Mechanisms for paying good teachers more than bad teachers and rewarding rarer skills (such as maths and science) are also too weak. Effective educational reform should mean an end to uniform national pay deals for teachers.

The evidence suggests that adopting the Swedish model would make the average UK school better, and lift weaker schools most of all."

Matthew Sinclair

Matthew is Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, author of Let Them Eat Carbon and editor of How to Cut Public Spending (and still win an election)

Follow @mjhsinclair

Hardeep_Singh

Yes I agree Mathew but then we wouldn’t have anymore children left to participate in the great social engineering experiment that seems to be underway. It’s the stroppy, non-industrialised huggy fluffies and left wing idealists that are running the show and they don’t put children’s education at the top of their list instead they see their own social engineering projects as the primary goal.
If we are living in a truly free society which under the current shadow of government I doubt then we’d be able to choose whatever we like from every aspect of society. Unfortunately that’s not the case and we don’t have any selection for such an important issue as education. We aren’t force to go shop at a single store, what airline to fly with nor what car to drive yet we can’t choose between schools.
The response is the usual episode of dellusion “but the non prefered schools would have to close” – exactly! Or we can simply scale them down for the children that remain so that they’re still available to those who want them, choice.
However with education so tainted at present from a politicised syllabus, weak/under educated teachers, absence of discipline we have a long, long way to go. Choice is just a single piece of the overall cutlery set.