School’s Out: How microschools boost educational choice and quality
The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, written by education policy analyst Sophie Sandor, outlines how microschools could boost educational outcomes:
The UK Government’s response to COVID-19 kept children out of school for the best part of a year, during which time children were offered lessons provided by teachers online and were homeschooled by parents.
The school closures of March 2020 have led to great learning losses for children, a significant number of whom completed only between zero and one hour of school work per day whilst locked down at home. Pupil performance in both reading and mathematics amongst Year 2 pupils, for example, progressed by two months less on average.
The level of education at home during school closures varied greatly across regions and social groups. Private school students and those not on free school meals undertook more education than state school pupils and those on free school meals.
Some educators and parents responded by forming ‘microschools’ or ‘pandemic pods’. These are very small schools conducted from the home of one of the pupils. They typically involve between 3 and 12 students.
Microschools could continue to play a valuable role in education post-COVID-19. They can cater to parents’ diverse preferences better than state schools. They also provide competition that drives up educational standards across the board. This would particularly help students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the people who suffer most from the shortcomings of the state school system.
Microschools are severely hampered in the United Kingdom as a result of cumbersome school regulations. Additionally, in the absence of tax-funded education vouchers, they would financially struggle to compete with state schools for pupils from low to middle income households.
Homeschooling is gaining in popularity, primarily because of improvements in communication technology which enable remote lessons from educators and access to a wide array of materials. Many parents who homeschool their children out of dissatisfaction with the state offering would prefer microschooling, if only it were affordable. Similarly, the demand for private tutoring is increased by the absence of affordable alternatives to state schools.
The regulatory liberalisation, signalled by the introduction of free schools in 2010, has not continued. Ofsted are finding a new zeal for regulating and supervising independent schools and, in certain cases, for shutting them down against the wishes of parents.
The homeschooling experience forced on millions of parents and children offers a glimmer of hope. The experience of an alternative to inadequate state education creates political demand for more options.
If the Government wants to increase educational choice and improve standards for disadvantaged students, they should liberalise school regulation to enable the proliferation of microschools:
Develop a new light-touch regulatory approach for microschools separate to current approach that limits microschools to a family home and four or fewer pupils;
Create a schools sandbox, modelled on the Financial Conduct Authority’s regulatory sandbox, to allow entrepreneurs to experiment with a diverse array of new arrangements for schooling in a light-touch regulatory environment;
Introduce a ‘schools voucher’ scheme to ensure that parents who choose to micro-school their children are not financially worse off with respect to state-support for their children’s education.