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.

OK (accepts telling off from Hester)

It's very true, there are far more interesting things to discuss on this thread but she does ask for it :)

getting back to the point
"MR Toby Young"
has 'solved' a problem that neither does
nor should have existed

my DD is doing latin in year 9
she'll get an A* (regardless of corrupt examiners) because her comp offer the bright (in languages) kids, those opportunities and to the kids that are better at other things - those things.

and to rest mycase
my wonderful sis who did TOP BS,top uni,top firm
now sees that state mat be a decent start

Thankfully whatever the views of the one size fits all socialists we don't live in that world and parents retain the choice to "home school", pay fees or otherwise.

(On the fact that day school fees, the average wage in the UK Is about £20k =- £25,000 depending on which figures you look at and at say Habs juniors the day fees are just under £10k a year. Any housewife who is reasonably well educated could go back to work and earn that. I am not saying it's easy but for those who think it is worth it to get into a school usually in the top 10 for A levels then it is with the life long advantages private school confers in the UK. However for right wing capitalist libertarians as I am the most important point is that there is a choice - if some people on this thread think their comprehensive is the bee's knees, that's great. I will continue to work often twice as hard as most people so that over half my income is given back to the state to educate your children. I choose to live in a country which does that. I am working before 6am on Saturday and more than half will be taken from me etc If some want their child out of school and educated at home let them. If they want to work hard and pay for a top school or even just a school which suits them - fundamentalist Christian , Muslim or a music school that's great too).

"so that over half my income is given back to the state to educate your children"

How do you figure that out?

I agree with Hester - making personal comments about an individual poster is not nice. You can disagree with opinions, but personal insults demean the insulter more than the insulted.

To change the subject: back to other countries which have 'successful' comprehensive school systems.

Findland is the one most commonly mentioned. Yet, guess how they deal with non-Finnish speaking recent immigrants?

They put them in separate classes with specialised teachers until their Finnish is considered at an appropriate level to join mainstream classes without negatively impacting the other pupils. They also appear to believe that expecting a mainstream teacher to teach these non-Finnish speakers in mainstream classes is unreasonable.

To me that sheds some light on why Finnish school succeed. They've manage to achieve a much narrower pupil ability range. Which makes teaching easier and setting (where needed) simpler.

And it couldn't be more different to the situation in much of the UK.

jack
but Finnish schools - while doing brilliantly at bringing everybody up to a standard - fail utterly at letting the exceptional excel

TIP2 - yes, so it appears. They are certainly looking at how to stretch their brightest pupils, at the moment.

IMO - creating a decent comprehensive school system starts with acknowledging the inherent weaknesses and challenges, and developing ways to overcome these.

Trouble is with so many vested interests and ideological baggage, plus the scars of the old 'tri-partite' system, I can't see that happening anytime soon.

That's why I like the Free School idea. It opens up opportunity for innovation in our education system. Many of these schools are being set up by teachers/ parents and others in education, who think they do better than the state. Maybe some will, certainly we'll see what is popular with parents.

Jack
and if they do not do better, they will have destroyed the education of those children

a year 4 is only a year 4 once - DO NOT screw up on them at the taxpayers expense

TIP2 - How does that square with them being 'middle-class' dominated 'escapes' from the local state school increasing entrenched privilege?

If they are truly bad schools they will fail quickly - unlike too many state schools which limp on for many years failing 1000's pupils.

Innovation always carries some risk - but stagnation guarantees eventual failure.

THe organisers are that - but the numbers at the schools are filled up with the desparate
and the amount of normal safeguards that have been set aside for free schools is scary

I don't think you need to worry about free schools. There are and probably will be hardly any of them. They will give a little bit of extra parental choice but for those who hate them they will have as little impact as fee paying schools or home schooling has on the educational system. They are a flea on the back of a dog (if you regard them in the flea category at all that is).

(Over 50% of income is taxed for a good few mumsnetters, 52% including NI) so more than half our earnings go back to the state.I certainly didn't mean 100% of the tax goes on education but certainly the 25% of us who are net givers to the tax system support the other 75% who are net takers and a good chunk is going on education of children in the state system. I would certanily not object to being given a voucher to spend where I choose for my bit)

"Over 50% of income is taxed for a good few mumsnetters, 52% including NI) so more than half our earnings go back to the state."

Um, you know that you only pay the 50% tax rate on any earnings over £150,000, right? You get your tax free personal allowance, 20% tax on up to £35,000 over this, 40% on anything extra up to £150,000 then 50% on anything over that. So that's not more than half your income.

Free Schools haven't really been round long enough to start failing, but some of them definitely will.

There are plenty of failing academies, which don't have the LA safety net so will continue to get worse, I would imagine.

I didn't say I was against having a welfare state. I would certainly cut back the frontiers of the state hugely and pass a lot more responsibility on to people for themselves.

I work with the pharma sector a lot - it is private sector owned and is one of our great success stories.

("Um, you know that you only pay the 50% tax rate on any earnings over £150,000, right? You get your tax free personal allowance, 20% tax on up to £35,000 over this, 40% on anything extra up to £150,000 then 50% on anything over that. So that's not more than half your income." Yes I know all that but if someone earned say £700k, most of what you earn is taxed at 52%. You don't get any single person allowance at that level and the bit taxed at the lower rates is de minimis and can be largely ignored. Similarly if someone is paid £2m a year. Most of it and the only bit that will really matter in their pocket is subject to the 52% tax and NI confiscation. You can see how that deters high earners. We now have one of the highest personal tax rates in the whole of the EU but without the virtually free child care and all the other benefits the other high tax places have).

The staggered erosion of the personal allowance means 100k-150k earners are paying a marginal rate of over 60%!!

And when the President of France gleefully predicts that London's French population will return to Paris because of high British taxes - you've got to wonder if the higher rate is sustainable.

By the way - there are only about 300,000 tax payers at the highest rate of 50%. And they contribute about 25% of all income tax.

"You can see how that deters high earners. We now have one of the highest personal tax rates in the whole of the EU but without the virtually free child care and all the other benefits the other high tax places have"

No, I don't really see how that deters high earners. If I were fabulously wealthy and had way more money than I needed, I wouldn't be bothered about how much was going back to the state to fund education etc, just as I'm not bothered now by the 20% of my income which goes back to the state. Bothered by it being mismanaged, perhaps, but not by having to contribute in the first place. I'm sure that if I were fabulously wealthy I would give a large portion of it away - think Bill Gates rather than Steve Jobs.
I'm not alone in this thinking westandwiththe99percent.tumblr.com/

Also, don't pretend that the fabulously wealthy are concerned about free childcare. I don't think for a minute that they'd use it, their children might have to mix with the less privileged less bright.

"By the way - there are only about 300,000 tax payers at the highest rate of 50%. And they contribute about 25% of all income tax."

I expect that for the vast majority of them, their high income and lifestyle is supported and made possible by people who don't pay 50% tax. So they owe them.

I woulbn't say being on £180k a year though is fabulously wealthy or even £250k. If you're keeping 4 children whose school fees are £50k out of taxed income you are concerned about childcare costs.

I was talking to a Finnish lawyer who on the move to London found the cost of their full time nursery place cost per month what he had been paying per year in his homeland. The quid pro quo used to be that in the UK you paid at most 40% tax and NI with a goodly amount of tax relief for pension contributions. That compact which was just about acceptable has been broken by all 3 political parties and therefore all you get is a return to 1970s style legal tax avoidance and more money to accountants, people wasting time they could spend discovering new drugs and getting the economy moving, on ensuring they earn capital not income or ensuring they aren't here in high tax England. It's a waste.

Also it's not really "way more money than you need" unless you're Gates because most people tend to find their spending just creeps up as they earn more. My student children would take tap water to drink. Presumably the one in a job now might venture into a coffee bar to buy a drink and I might hope on a taxi without a thought (although because I've a lot of debt etc due to divorce I do try to ensure I keep spending as low as possible to get a bit of spare income left over after I've paid my 5 x tithe (is that right a bibloical tithe was 10% so we have - let's make up a name - I need a latin scholar - quint something tithe...) to pay back debt.

We've taken the thread away from new free schools to tax but they are not unrelated. I very much doubt free schooling will reduce spending on education. It may please a few core voters and the very few children within the system may benefit and their parents may be happy and I suppose a few who might have paid school fees might not which is a loss to the tax payer) but I regard it as likely to have minimal effects.

Most of the free schools seem to be being set up by religious nutters really but you always get that with schooling and I would support their freedom to be as religiously nutterish as they like. It would be a dull world if we lived in a Chairman Mao socialist uptopia where everyone were the same.

On the pharma industry - yes we can agree to differ. I spoke to someone who'd made programmes against it and he was so incensed I might be pro and a capitalist to boot he had to terminate the conversation - poor man. I certainly agree (see this week's study) that many of our health problems are of our own making because individuals eat the wrong foods. Even there I would pause and say stop being an idito and eat well. Don't blame blame blame the state ore the pharma industry. Be a responsibilti adult,. No one is forcing you to eat junk food every day. There isn't a Glaxo representative in your house spoonign crispy kreme poison i nto you so that your cancers spread faster so that you need mroe big pharma drugs.

Grow up. Don't moan. Take responsibility. Earn your own living etc.

We used to be a nation like that (and free schools are about choice and the values the Conservative party still seem in part to retain although they are nothing like radical enough for many of us) andw e have lost it a bit. If people could stand up and say I am sat as a pig because I eat too much or My children go to a useless school because I didn't get my finger out at A level stage and get my As we might get a bit further as a nation.

I just love the easy assumptions people make about others lifestyles and motivations and the judgements on how they should feel and behave.

I think I read somewhere that to most people 'fabulous wealth' is about 50% more than they currently earn. Trouble is; it's always just out of reach for most of us.

"I woulbn't say being on £180k a year though is fabulously wealthy or even £250k. "

But you brought up people who were earning £700k or £2m because the majority of what they earn is taxed at 50%. I don't think that anyone could possibly dispute that they are fabulously wealthy.

"If you're keeping 4 children whose school fees are £50k out of taxed income you are concerned about childcare costs."

The glaringly obvious point to make here is that you have chosen to spend your wealth on private schooling. That you have spent your money on private schooling is your choice and given that you have chosen to ignore the free state school option, why on earth should I then assume that if offered free childcare you would take it up?

"My student children would take tap water to drink. Presumably the one in a job now might venture into a coffee bar to buy a drink "

Good grief, are you trying to suggest that you are hard done by? Just because you have chosen to spend your money elsewhere than bottled water doesn't mean that you are badly-off. Even I, with my lowly 20% taxed income can afford to buy a drink in a coffee shop every now and then. I can't, however, afford private schooling.

"I would support their freedom to be as religiously nutterish as they like."

Won't somebody think of the children?

"I spoke to someone who'd made programmes against it and he was so incensed I might be pro and a capitalist to boot he had to terminate the conversation - poor man. "

I expect he, like me, can see the obvious problems caused by having a industry that makes its profits out of people being ill. I'm surprised that you can't.

"There isn't a Glaxo representative in your house spoonign crispy kreme poison i nto you so that your cancers spread faster"

They would if they could, you know. Look at the herbal and vitamin pill industry for examples of how bad it can get - vitamin pills to cure AIDs for example. By the way, Glaxo make both Ribena and toothpaste :)

Anybody on £2m a year who is thick enough to have it all as "income" rather than capital gains etc deserves to pay 50% tax on it.

For the millions of people earning under £20,000 a year such arrogance by the super rich is just offensive

remember that the median wage (ie the one that half the population earn less than) is £19,500 for the most recent figures available

It depends on your job. If you are a salaried NHS consultant on £150k which I think is just about possible or under that but do a bit of private work or you're an employee in the City you don't get much choice about being "employed" or not. However I agree with you that once tax gets so highi t's a disincentive people lawfully seek to reduce it which seems a bit of a waste of effort when they could instead be earning more money to keep the poor.

The only reason we have drugs to cure people is because of the pharma industry. People should kiss their feet really. I suspect however we shall have to disagree with each other on that. Few do God's work more than big pharma nor ease the lives of so many mumsnetters who are in pain, ill or have children with various afflictions.

(never said I was poor - I was just tying to say it's relative - the very poor such as students or single people without children on state benefits wouldn't dream of buying a drink in starbucks whereas a secretary with a wage might do so. There will always be someone better off than we all are)

"Few do God's work more than big pharma"

Jesus healed the sick for free. If we are making a comparison here with easing the lives of mumsnetters in pain, ill or who have children with various afflictions, then praise the NHS.