Tory schools policy - what do you think of idea of allowing parents/others to start their own schools? A good plan or no?

[JustineMumsnet]

The Tories are saying in their manifesto that they plan to develop schools under the Swedish "free schools" and the US "charter school" models: small, autonomous schools run and set up by parents, teachers, universities, faith groups and voluntary groups.

What do you reckon? Could you find the time/energy to start a school? Would you rather attend a school run by a small autonomous group or by central government?

(Am due on BBC news 24 to discuss so your thoughts would be much appreciated)
Txs

Furthermore, this proposed policy allows me the use of public funds to educate my child the way I wish. The Labour policy says that if I don't want the National Curriculum, then I'm SOL and need to provide for my child's education on my own, either by paying tuition or by HE. How is that more egalitarian?

well I'm sure you know what your dd's needs are TFL, and I also have a pretty good idea of mine.

"This option is not egalitarian at all. The reality will be that those children with pushy parents will get much further than those children from ordinary or deprived backgrounds. Sorry to sound judgemental, but it will be those same parents who send their kids to after-school tuition every evening and push them into private schools because they think the state systems aren't enough for their precious children. There will be a huge disparity of quality of education in different areas. Children from deprived backgrounds and those families who do not have good English will be marginalised."

This is such a sad attitude. It seems to be saying everyone must stay at the same low level or it's not fair.

I do believe that schools should not rely on parent input at all, and should be able to rescue children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The current system ie the National Curriculum, the SATS, the box-ticking, the poorly educated (through no fault of their own) teachers, the bureaucracy, the paperwork doesn't do that and is reliant on parent support for success.

I'd hope the plan for parent led schools would not only be for the children of the parents who have the drive to start such a school, and would be able to educate other children less fortunate in the parent department. I haven't read enough about it to know if this is the case.

If it is the case, I would lay money on these schools being very much in demand for those children.

barefootinthepark

"the poorly educated (through no fault of their own) teachers"
!
In my state secondary all teachers have degrees in the subjects they teach and PGCEs .. many are studying for Masters degrees.. as far as Im aware its only fee paying schools who give jobs to teachers who are unqualified.

but Bluebell, that's not the case, especially in science, in so many schools! will dig out some stats for you if you like when I've sorted my mountain of laundry.

TFL thank you for your explanation and posting the Link to F40. Having had a quick look - two things strike me - 1. Have you asked the Tories and LibDem if they share your concerns? 2. The whole 'pupil premium' idea, much as I like it, is going to be complicated to work out!

In agreement with Zazzi and Seth I like the idea of an academic school with a mixed ability intake. If people like Toby Young want to invest their own time and effort in it great!

Likewise - the Swedish school independent learner scheme looks promising.

I can't quite understand the complacent 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' attitude. The UK comprehensive school system hasn't lived up to it's initial promise of universal fairness (see the Sutton report) and it fails thousands of our most academic children. After 30 odd years (more than the tripartite system had) it's time to try something new.

A point on which both Labour and the Tories appear to agree!

agree Jack.
Of course, there are some wonderful schools and I think there are probably quite a lot that are living up to the comprehensive ideal, and also that Labour have done much to raise standards in many of these schools. (The one near me I mentioned that is not terrible but not academic used to be appalling across the board, for instance.)
However it seems to me that one of the nice things about this idea is that it won't mess with the schools that are already good, only offer more hope of an alternative to the bad ones.
I'm not getting carried away here - I'm sure there will be disasters and of course places where no-one can be bothered with setting up new schools even though they are needed, but it does potentially offer a route for improvement.

this was the first page I found

only just over half of (new) maths teachers have a degree in maths.. to be a science teacher you don't need a degree in science etc etc

in addition one must admit there seem to have been failings in basic education which have given us some primary teachers who can't spell well, can't punctuate etc, and perhaps don't see their importance?

Agree with blu - it works in Sweden because they have a generally shared view of what is the right thing to do for children and a willingness to accept things that might not benefit their child directly, but that is for the good of the majority. The UK is far more "what's best for me is best" and so you're going to get a load of disagreements and shoving about every issue that schools face. I agree the current system is not great, but the thought of my children at a school run by, say, the dreadful shouty woman on our PTA who insists that people are being rude every time someone gently contradicts her, or the appalling dad whose son has to be on every sports team or he throws a wobbly at both the son and the sports teacher, make my blood run cold. I want my children's education run by people who have taken time to study and not some "concerned parent" who thinks they can do a better job because they have Latin o-level.

Barefootinthepark - the document states:

"You need to have a degree to become a teacher."

so hardly poorly educated...

Bluebell, I don't really want to be horrible to teachers because our lives are in their hands and so on and so forth and they have to work chuffing hard. But I think there is no denying that some teachers have been poorly educated. Degrees are not what they were: to not have a degree in the subject you teach is rather odd: primary education over the last twenty years has placed more emphasis on creativity over basic skills than it previously did (to be euphemisic). And we know this because it's starting to be corrected in the NC.

I don't say it's all teachers, but it's a bit bullish to say it's not the case at all.

I have definitely come across poorly educated teachers. Obviously they are bright but they haven't had the education they deserve.

Barefoot in the park - I don't think it is odd for a maths teacher to have a degree in engineering or science or even business, as most of the maths teachers with non-maths degrees in that page you linked to did. Any of those degrees will still require a knowledge of maths well beyond A-level standard.

barefoot Interesting link thanks.

Seth

"However it seems to me that one of the nice things about this idea is that it won't mess with the schools that are already good, only offer more hope of an alternative to the bad ones."

Exactly. One lesson I hope learnt from the past is, not to mess with already good schools! Also, I am all in favour of slow and sure rollouts.

I wonder if some of the problems we have with our current comprehensive school system were created by the hasty way it was deployed. For example there weren't enough degree qualified teachers to spread across all the comprehensive schools. Some schools (ex grammars?) had enough - but many didn't.

No no, for sure, but 13 per cent have arts degrees. In fact pu ttogether, over a fifth of science and maths teachers have arts degrees.

The biggest difference between our schools is the background of the students within it. It can make poor or coasting schools seem good and brilliant schools seem bad. The social make-up of some schools will mean that this policy will not be advantageous since no-one or too few people will take the government up on it. In the areas where this opportunity is used, the intake in those schools will change. Maybe to no effect but possibly to a 'good' school's detriment. I've seen this happen when boundry lines have been changed.

This policy is a ploy. If these schools have to conform to the same rules and regulations as current schools then there will be no change for any children at all. If they don't, then why not allow the current schools this freedom? It would be cheaper and cause less disruption.

Would it not be more sensible to say that all schools will have a consultation amongst staff and parents as to the direction they want their school to go and give them the freedom to do it?

This is another article by Toby Young.

Soapboxqueen it addresses some of your doubts.

Fwiw I don't think either Tory or Labour see Free Schools as an alternative to the main Academy rollout. My impression is that the Academy program is about getting good schools into relatively poor areas. The Free School idea is about enabling relatively 'better off' areas to get schools which meet their needs.

I just feel that unless the free schools are given total autonomy they will end up exactly the same as the state schools. I would love to set up my own school because I don't like the way education in this country generally works but I know that somewhere the government would create a target or policy which would mean it would have to change from what was best.

I'm not a big fan of the academies either. There has been far too much meddling in the background to make sure they seem sucessful.

The Nov 2008 Ofsted report on the state of England's schools in 2007 confirmed the appalling balls up Labour has made of education, despite ploughing billions into it. We've know this for more than two years now, why do people keep insisting Labour has done well, they clearly haven't!!

In 2008 one pupil in five left primary school without a proper grasp of English and mathematics. More than half of 16-year-olds left school without decent GCSEs (that is, five A to Cs, including English and maths).

"To compare favourably with the best in the world," said Christine Gilbert, Ofsted's chief inspector, "education in England must do better".

And when compared with the rest of the world, the situation is even gloomier. In the international rankings of leading economies, since 2000 we have dropped from fourth to 14th place in science, seventh to 17th in literacy, from eighth to 24th in maths.

Yet how can this be? Each year, we read that our examination results are getting better. So festooned with As and A*s are applicants to our leading universities that new entrance examinations are being devised to search out the most talented.

In reality, an examination system that has lost much of its credibility has for years masked the fact that the comprehensive education model has been tested to destruction.

It is failing to produce the highly skilled workforce everyone agrees is crucial if we are to prosper in the future.

Comprehensives are failing because too many are infused with the 1960s liberal orthodoxies that still permeate teacher training and which place too much store on equality, not enough on excellence.

They are failing because discredited mixed-ability teaching continues in too many schools, against the wishes of ministers.

And they are failing because even inspirational head teachers are being smothered by the red tape emanating each day from county hall and Whitehall.

In its heart of hearts, Labour knows that comprehensives are not the answer - hence its drive for academy schools which are, in another guise, the Conservative grant-maintained schools Labour scrapped when it came to power.

Remove left wing ideology from state schooling and we might be able to get some improvement, but as it is, it can only continue downhill.

Soapboxqueen I think you have a very good point about targets and policies still getting in the way, but I also think (hope?) that free schools will be better placed to say 'we don't care about league tables' etc than schools in local authority control.
IIRC free schools will be able to do IGCSE, Baccalaureat etc and that should make a big difference to the opportunities available.

Funny. Finland don't stream their children and have the best schools in the world. Labour have put in massive amounts of extra funding which was very much needed after the last Tory government. Infact, new rules were brought in to stop schools stock piling cash because they had become so used to the the low and uncertain budgets handed down by the conservatives.

The Labour party have over prescribed the curriculum and almost everything else in public sector services. They need to back off and allow people with experience dictate the next moves in education. The Conservatives have an 'I'm alright, if your not, tough!' approach which will be to the detrement of many.

Education will continue to 'fail' in this country until we decide what we actually want it to do. Education for education's sake, factory fodder, or something else?

LINCSTASH

In how many schools does mixed ability teaching continue...certainly not in any of the comprehensive schools around us or the one that I attended (which I left with the best GSCE results in the country before going on to Cambridge)

Even in reception, my dd was setted.

I think that this is a myth propagated by people who don't like comprehensives. (They are not hot-beds of left-wingism; just places where teachers (who do transfer between all sorts of schools) create a good learning atmosphere.

Some mixed ability teaching did happen in the 1960s but I have been associated with many comps. (either through attendance or teaching) and all of them have setted the children.

And why do people not like them? In grammer schools areas (like Kent) results are poorer than in areas with no grammer schools. Probably because those who get into the grammers think they've 'made-it' and do less work than they would be encouraged to do if in a top set in a comp. and that those in the secondary moderns are just demotivated.

And, just to add, our town is all comprehensives and even the least popular one that gets the most difficult and least motivated children still achieves 47% 5 A-Cs.

Many of the comps. send lots to Oxbridge each year.

SethStarkaddersMum I truely hope you are correct in that the free schools will be left to be...well free. i just don't think it will happen. If they don't but in budget control based on attainment then the first time a parent complains or a newpaper gets a headline that a free school is underperforming the government will be asked to step in. Cue policy to curb that freedom. I don't think in principle they are a bad idea I just the Tories are suggesting them as a gimmic.

wilbur - love your comments!

Builde Not sure that I follow the logic that whilst academic selection at 11 is harmful, dividing kids by academic ability at 4 years old is fine. Do you think the dc's don't notice that the 'top table' is for the clever kids?

From what I've read there is a lot of merit in the way the Finns have developed their comprehensive school system. Ours, in comparison, is totally half hearted.

Thanks builde. I realise I was coming a bit late to the debate but I have read the thread with great interest and also with a sense of hope that so many people do feel strongly about education and are prepared to debate and fight for what they feel is best for the country's children (and therefore the country's future). I, personally am in favour of lots of different types of schools as I believe the exchange of ideas from one sector to another (faith/secular/state/private/grammar/comprehensive) has the potential to really enrich education overall, but this particular policy seems to be saying "here's the answer, noe get on and do it" without really looking at the quailities of the people who are going to be involved in the decision making process. Plus, I live in an area which is desparately desparate for new schools and I worry that the campaigning and money for those will be rerouted.