Will free schools drive up standards? Read Toby Young's guest post and join the conversation

[ElenMumsnetBloggers]

Are free schools ready to fall or fly? Do they really drive up standards or are they a snobbish gimmick? And should more parents be setting up their own schools? Journalist and producer Toby Young explains why he set up the West London Free School and what makes the free school proposition an exciting one. Join the conversation that Toby's begun and have your say on free schools.

I don't mind what someone's IQ is as long as he or she is able to debate sensibly and aren't rude, dismissive or snobbish of those they consider beneath them

I don't believe this would be the case if there were as many grammar schools as there were comprehensive schools, as it used to be the case.

No, it used to be the case that for every grammar school, there were roughly 4 secondary moderns. Even with 20% selection, the remaining schools couldn't be considered comprehensive - with 50% selection, lord knows what they would be and who would want to teach in them.

I'd like to manage a 1000 thickos, please, so I can wank my ego off about how much cleverer I am than they.

The main difference will be everyone in the school will have an IQ of 120 or whatever so the whole ethos of the place is fast and good and excel in all types of subjects. It becomes a bit like an Oxbridge where you meet other very bright people. Most of us don't want dinner with people with a low IQ as the conversation is so dull so why would we want to be educated with them?
Xenia are you never in the company of people who were not selected for grammar school, or whatever, who, nevertheless, can hold an interesting conversation. Or do you just assume that every interesting one must have been a selected one?

Cecily
I know exactly what they would be like
my catchment school
which is a sponsored academy merger of two failed schools
they got through heads like a dose of salts and at one stage more than half the staff were supply
now its a happy clappy academy with around 400 on roll rather than the 900 they are constructing the new building for
the only job vacanies in the last year have been for truant officers

or if you want to see in a grammar county ; look up the Marsh Academy

if I had a very slow child I'd pick a good private school which adds lots of value and hope to bring them on.

If you had a very slow child, you might find that many good private schools wouldn't want him or her.

or they would do what my sister's school did
take the thick girl and daddies money / gifts
and then ask her to leave before the exams so she did not damage their results !!!!

So if your child was 'slow', you'd want him or her to be in a stimulating environment where there were children who were rather brighter, who might provide an example and evidence that it's possible to achieve - even though you also think that wouldn't really be of any benefit to the brighter children.

I can see literally no blindingly obvious parallel here.

I spoke to two people this week, one very very slow, taking 5 times as long as I do to process information . It was intolerable and someone else very bright. It is a massive difference.

Heavens, Xenia. How dreadful that must have been for you. These people really should not be allowed to mix with us clever folks.

oh good, somebody else spotted the crass hypocrisy of Xenia's comment

my bright kids must be saved from the thick kids
but my thick kids must be helped by the bright kids

Yes, and the same point about girls and boys. Girls do better in single sex schools, boys don't. So the motehr of a girl sends them to single sex schools and mothers of boys might choose a mixed school even if that's worse for the girls in the class.

The question of enjoying talking to people who are bright is a very different topic but most people share that view. The barely coherent thick as a plankers have grunting conversations littered with the f word amongst their own kind.

Xenia
My children are at the same comp ; they are both young in their year ; they are both lazy lippy lumps at home

DD is excelling absolutely and utterly - even my UTTER snob of a mother had to admit that her learning is comparable to mine (GDST), my sister's (mega famous gels boarding school) and my niece's (nayce boarding MOD paid)

DS is stubborn to the bone but getting there. He is starting to excel and the school provide an environment where he can do so

Your comments about the "thick" people merely demonstrate your own ignorance and narrow mindedness.

One of my clients digs holes. He loves to dig holes. He is good at digging holes. He is thick as they come and utterly uneducated. But I have the intelligence to engage him on topics where he can let what little articulacy he has flourish. At which stage he is good company for the time he is in my house.

'Has a truly comprehensive system ever worked though anywhere in the world?'

Er, yes. In Scandinavia and Canada which both have much more social mobility than we do.

Doesn't the concept of free schools emanate from Scandinavian Sweden?

the trouble with comparing the UK with Canada or Sweden is the demographics

www.indexmundi.com/sweden/demographics_profile.html
www.indexmundi.com/canada/demographics_profile.html
www.indexmundi.com/united_kingdom/demographics_profile.html

they are much "flatter" societies and the UK will never be like them
we have to start the journey from where we are now

"The number of independent schools in Sweden is growing, and a choice of schools is seen today as a right. Each child is allocated the funding for an education, from preschool up to and including senior high school. In this way, the Swedish government supports the establishment of independent schools.

Independent schools must be approved by the Schools Inspectorate and follow the national curricula and syllabuses. Nine percent of compulsory school students and 20 percent of senior high school students attend independent schools."

www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Education/Basic-education/Facts/Education-in-Sweden/

Intelligence does not equal interesting - my mum is an incredibly intelligent women graduated with a first in mathematics aged 16, then continued on to a first in chemistry and become a very clever computer programmer alongside some rather more famous contemporaries BUT she is one of the hardest people I have ever met to engage in conversation. Her mind whizzes through stuff to fast and her social skills are frankly crap.
Interesting people come from all walks of life and getting to mix with a good variety of them at school is part of becoming a well rounded human being. Schools are best if they can focus on a wide range of opportunities and talent and push children in the right direction for them as individuals be that university or something more vocational. As long as they open up opportunities it should not matter if not everybody is academically gifted.... After all at the end of the day if everyone in your Childs school is G&T the curve is going to be well and truly skewed and your talented little darling may end up on the wrong side of the curve for their parents!
I think if we focussed our energies less on a weird notion of choice and more on quality we could actually drive up standards across the board and coupling this with the understanding that not everybody needs to go to uni (altho the opportunity should be there if they wish to do so) as this is one career choice within many perfectly valid and worthy choices rather than the be all and end all choice.

Good post. wonkylegs.
But sometimes choice is a guarantee of quality.
In East Germany, people had no choice but a Trabant, and the system felt no urge to increase quality. In free West Germany people had choice and could choose a quality BMW or Porsche. Very few would have chosen a Trabant.

Choice and competition increased quality.

In East Germany there was no choice and the socialist system knew best.
In West Germany people had free choice and were allowed to make their own choice what was best.

Education standards in Scandinavia are well known for being much higher than in Britain. IT's hard to compare their free schools since they have been more integrated, non faith based and non selective however the recent increase has been deeply unpopular and led according to this study to greater social and ethnic segregation, greater costs and worsening working conditions for teachers. Also that competition has led to less cooperation between schools (one of the strenghts of the Scandinavian system).

www.llakes.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Wiborg-online.pdf

So typical of Gove to use the worst aspects of a very successful education system which doesn't even make any financial sense.

Apparently Sweden has the lowest variation between schools in OECD coutnries apart from Iceland, the percentage in private schools is below average and social segregation is low. Go figure!

And, I can't copy and paste from the document but, 'the most important cause behind the pattern of social segregation - where some schools become elitist and others develop a poor reputation - is ultimately the choice of parents.'

It's so blindingly obvious that amazes me that some people don't seem to understand that some schools excel and exclude at the expense of others.

Cecily: Holland Park is indeed in a very wealthy area. The vast majority of very local children go to private schools. There are also many poor children living slightly further off (towards Earls Court, Hammersmith, Shepherds Bush, North Kensington). You have plenty of super-rich families in that area, and a smaller number of desperately poor families. Far fewer in between. I know, because I lived there and couldn't find a community of people who weren't either recent refugees waiting to be moved on, or international bankers' wives. The school situation round there (primary and secondary) is very strange. So I left.

The reports cited in this argument suggest that all the coalition's talk about 'UK schools sliding down international league tables' may somewhat inaccurate and alarmist.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-16054654?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

I know, Hester, I was brought up in the area. Many of my friends went to Holland Park and they were on the spectrum from very poor to very rich. I would agree that there are probably fewer people in the middle now than there were then.