Authors against the database state

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Anthony Horowitz, Anne Fine, Quentin Blake, Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo will stop visiting schools in protest over the government’s desire to put them on a database. This is part of the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS), managed by one of those pesky quangos, the Independent Safeguarding Authority. One for the dustbin, I suggest, Mr Cameron.

Respected author Philip Pullman has described the policy as “corrosive and poisonous to every kind of healthy social interaction." He went on to state: “I've been going into schools as an author for 20 years, and on no occasion have I ever been alone with a child. The idea that I have become more of a threat and I need to be vetted is both ludicrous and insulting. Children have never been in any danger from visiting authors or illustrators, and the idea that they should be is preposterous."

Former Children's Laureate Anne Fine has set out that: "When it [the VBS] becomes essential, I shall continue to work only in foreign schools, where sanity prevails…The whole idea of vetting an adult who visits many schools, but each only for a day, and then always in the presence of other adults, is deeply offensive."

Anthony Horowitz hits the nail on the head in questioning the thinking behind this move: “What I really hate about this database is the way it poisons the very special relationship that exists between children and the authors they admire. What sort of sick mind could whisper that there might be something suspect in that relationship, that children should be wary of all adults – unless they're government-approved?"

This move is indicative of a government ideologically compelled to control. It is time that schools were trusted with the care of children, backed up by parents through PTAs and other internally determined processes. Unless power is taken back from the state, we will increasingly see the destruction of the institutions and informal ties that bind people together. Moves such as these undermine further the fabric of society, and the best thing the authors can do in response is ignore the government and carry on attending schools regardless.

The future of grammar schools

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The Head of the Grammar Schools Heads’ Association has announced that he thinks children from poor backgrounds should be given priority over the middle-classes in admission to grammar schools. He has also said that the 11+ should be scraped in favour of an exam that benefits the lower classes.
 
This is a clear example of positive discrimination and a ‘dumbing-down’ of education. I agree with the view that the 11+ needs modernizing, at 11 children are too young to take high pressure exams which can have a huge outcome on their futures. There is no doubting the Middle-class education machine where parents are willing and able to spend on private tutoring and coaching. I have invigilated 11+ exams where children are distraught that they cannot answer any questions whilst their parents have imposed so much pressure upon them. But parents are not to blame for wanting the best for their children.
 
The blame lies with the poor standards of education that state schools currently provide. Parents and children are often faced with the choice of a grammar school or a comprehensive with little variation or scope for individual needs. If the education system was opened up and individual schools were given greater autonomy, pupils would be able to choose a school that could cater to their needs and offer a more tailored education.
 
Clearly the solution to the poor education standards is not to positively discriminate against middle class students. Instead we need to be offering pupils greater choice and opportunity and provide schools with greater incentives to raise standards across the board, not just for one section of society.

Education reform in the US

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Cato's Andrew J. Coulson blogged yesterday about spending on education in Washington DC. His figures certainly seem to put paid to the idea that private schools only perform better because they have more money to spend.

Coulson found that:

• DC's K-12 school spending was $1,291,815,886 in the 2008-09 school year.
• At the same time, 44,681 students were enrolled in those schools.
• If that number excludes the 2,400 special needs students that have been placed in private schools, then DC's total per pupil spending is $27,400.
• If those 2,400 students are actually included in the figures (it's not clear), then DC’s correct total per pupil spending is $28,900.
• Meanwhile, the average tuition figure at the private schools serving DC voucher students was just $6,600 (according to the US Department of Education).
• After three years, voucher-receiving kids are reading two grade levels ahead of their public school peers (also according to the Department of Education).

These figures are remarkable, albeit not that surprising: the ability of the private sector to provide more for less is well known and well established, even in education. The key factors driving this difference are greater accountability, the freedom to innovate, the absence of heavy-handed bureaucracy, and the weakening of the teachers' unions.

That last one is crucial in the US context and is, I would suggest, the answer to Coulson's question: why did President Obama kill the DC voucher programme? To put it simply, Obama just cares more about his friends (and donors) in the Unions than he does about disadvantaged school children.

P.S. I wrote an extended blog about "Why the private sector succeeds where the state fails" here a few weeks ago.

Forcing schools to merge

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Ed Balls has announced that successful and failing schools could be forced to merge in an attempt to improve the standards of state education.

Most of the focus of this announcement ahead of a report to be released next week is upon the decision by Balls to override the £120,000 salary cap, yet this is clearly not the story. More importantly, this is another move in the centralization of power to Westminster. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) is clearly usurping the power of schools and local authorities.

The pressure on bad schools to acquiesce to mergers is perhaps understandable, but Balls is facing up to the few state schools that are successful. He will bring pressure to bear in making them merge, stating: “If you are a school that has got the potential to do this but chooses not to, you’re not making a contribution to other schools in your area. Therefore Ofsted will recognise you aren’t being as ambitious as you could be." A not so veiled threat.

Whether people realise it or not, the education system is a market; it just happens to be a very bad one that is controlled through force by a wasteful and inefficient state. Now Balls wants more control, which can only lead to less control and choice at the level of the consumer. Parents and children suffer from these power grabs, taxpayers pick up the bill, while politicians sit in their ivory towers, packing their children off to some of the best private schools in the country.

Home schooling vs. the state

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Popular culture by its very nature is a driver of homogeneity; the conscious individual whose views sit outside the norm, either has to fit-in or act outside what is deemed normal: neither is an easy option. This is troubling, but not insurmountable. Popular culture only becomes seriously oppressive when the state legislates.

This Labour government has been especially bad at dealing with difference, and its latest stance against home schooling is indicative of this lack of tolerance and understanding. Specifically, the government is considering forcing home educating families to have to register annually and demonstrate they are providing a suitable education. It would mean that local Councils would be given the power to force children into school against their parent’s wishes.

The BBC reports that: “Some teaching unions say they feel home educated children do not develop certain skills such as co-operation, conflict management or relationship-building." The irony of teaching unions holding up these virtues is comically ironic given their track record for militant power battles between themselves and the government. If that’s the kind of co-operation, conflict management or relationship-building a state education can give you, I am not at all surprised people prefer to privately educate their children or teach them at home in increasing numbers.

The choice to teach children at home is an issue that distinguishes the Conservative from the Libertarian. All on the left are of course behind the state’s stranglehold over our children, but many on the right feel an equal compulsion to control. As such, those that do not want their children educated by the state may still be in peril once Labour are eventually turfed out.

The value of education

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From deep in the cavern of bad policy ideas, the National Union of Students (NUS) have pulled out a cracker: former students should pay up to 2.5 per cent of their salary for 20 years after graduating to fund higher education. The tax would be levied depending on earnings.

The NUS’ policy is essentially a tax upon success. Those students who have worked and sacrificed to get into a top university, who while at university studied a demanding subject and focused more on study than the pub, who came out with the grades and skills to get a decent job that demands yet more work and sacrifice, will be paying for the education of the of lazy students ‘studying’ in third-rate universities. This is not meritocracy, quite the opposite in fact.

The impact of this tax would certainly send the top students abroad to study and or work. Many of the best and the brightest would prefer to pay an upfront payment for their education abroad instead of having their salary jacked by the government for twenty years; else they will take the benefits of a British education, only to work abroad, no doubt avoiding repayments entirely.

Only when education is truly liberalized will we see a meritocratic system emerge. Of course, those young people with no financial means who fail to qualify for a bursary will indeed have to borrow in order to be educated and the better the education the more the cost. But crucially it will then be their decision as to whether or not the education is worth that level of investment. This would be a meritocracy. If the students do not consider the education to be worth getting into debt over, they can and will choose to spend their productive energy in another direction.

Privatize universities

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Sir Roy Anderson, Rector of Imperial College London, said the top UK universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, should be freed from state control and allowed to charge students more than the current £3,145 capped fees, and to attract more international students to boost their income.

Why stop there? Before 1919, all UK universities were independent. They should be again. Britain has four universities in the world's top ten, but the league tables are dominated by America's independent universities like Harvard, Yale, CalTech, Chicago, MIT and Columbia. And while we are slipping, America's colleges are rising. They are taking the best brains, and the best students, and are pulling in more cash to fund their teaching and their research. Thirty US universities have endowment funds of over £1bn. Only Oxford and Cambridge come close, but Harvard has five times more cash in the bank than either of them.

But that's how the US system works. The real cost of a university education is not £3,145. It's more like £40,000. And some US universities do indeed charge that amount of money. But they use their endowment funds to make sure that bright students who can't afford fees on that scale are given scholarships so they can get the education anyway. Students are admitted on merit, but supported according to their needs.

As Professor Terence Kealey, head of the (largely) independent Buckingham University, says in an Adam Smith Institute Briefing, that is what should happen in the UK. Instead of subsidizing universities, we should subsidize needy students, so that anyone who is capable of doing well at university has the opportunity to go. I would tell Sir Roy and his colleagues to charge whatever they like – £40,000 if that it what their product actually costs – provided that they make sure no needy student is turned away. Yes, some of the money that is currently doled out to the universities by the Higher Education Funding Councils could be used for those scholarships. Otherwise, the universities will have to go out and raise the money for scholarship funds themselves.

Free to choose what we tell you

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Anyone that has a vague understanding of the differences between Labour and the Conservatives on education policy knows that the latter have quite a different vision and remarkably better one. Despite some success with Academies, Labour are increasingly stuck in the mantra of a system that continues to fail children taught be the state, while the Conservatives are committed to creating a limited market in education.However, don’t be fooled into thinking that education will be liberated under the Conservatives. As Thatcher centralized while privatizing, Cameron’s Conservatives seem intent on offering choice within boundaries that in fact restrict. In much the same way that Labour has fermented education and its institutions to defend its socialistic vision of the world, the Conservatives will use education to promote theirs.

Claiming in ‘ Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap’ that “the only constraints on New Academies, and indeed on existing Academies, should be the curriculum requirements which apply to independent schools" is in reality a hefty weight around the necks of those educating and being educated. Like Labour, the Conservative Party will use the National Curriculum as tool with which to try to instil their view of the world into the minds of the children of this country. This is not freedom for schools and teachers, but the contiued politicization of education.

Take history for example. The Conservative's plan to force teaching with a focus on British history. Of course, you might think this is better than what we have now, but let parents, schools and teachers decide if that is the case. For my part, I would like to see a school teach the history of various battles for freedom throughout the ages; a fair amount of this would be British history, but rather a lot would not. Instead the Conservative Party want to “instill an appreciation of our national culture and nation’s past". No thanks.

Competition in education

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When MacDonalds is offering the best education on the high street, you know the government is not doing a very good job.

Reforming schools - A self-correcting system

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Plagued by persistent regulation, our system of state education is barred from reaching the level of quality that teachers not only aspire to, but are fully capable of achieving. Schools themselves are better placed than local government to decide where they should be allowed to set up and how they should function.

 It takes only a small reform of our current system to allow the potential of our teachers and schools to be fulfilled - the creation of a system where schools of all kinds, whether they are state, private or charity-run, provide free and universal education, funded on a per-pupil basis by government, and given the freedom from burdensome regulation that the private sector enjoys. This is not an imposed reform, instead enabling schools to run themselves, opting in of their own accord, with government acting as the financier rather than the provider of free education.

The beauty of the reform is its self-correcting nature - the first of these free schools will appear where education is most in demand. As a school becomes popular, more parents will choose to send their children there and since it is paid per pupil, its income will increase. If a school is unpopular, then fewer and fewer pupils will be sent there until it either improves or fails. Schools will be able to innovate, directly rewarded for successful models of education through their popularity. Even if the amount paid per pupil is too low, then fewer schools will opt into the system until it can be increased.

However, this reform requires that all schools that have opted into the system be allowed to make a profit - something that the opposition party have shied away from, despite it being the principal reason for the system's success in Sweden. Without the entitlement to make a profit, not only will uptake of the system be slow, but successful schools will also be unable to expand and spread that success to other parts of the country for all pupils, parents and teachers to enjoy.

Anton Howes is leader of the Social Liberalist Party.