Free schools?

The education secretary today set out the rules for his big new idea: 'free' schools.

By free, of course, he means that the taxpayer will fund them, but only the parents will get to decide on how the money's spent, what's taught, admissions policy and so on.

There are problems with this. Firstly, only a small group of parents has the time and ability to go about setting these schools up - the shouty, demanding, greedy bourgeoisie, which already dominates the public sphere.

Secondly, the point of schools being administered by the elected local authority is that decisions can be taken for the good of the community. If a school needs to be closed, opened, changed, whatever because the community has changed, an elected body needs to be responsible. They can take a strategic view on behalf of us all. If they're right, they get re-elected. If they're wrong, they get sacked. The community hopefully benefits.

Under the 'free' system, a bunch of parents can decide that their kids shouldn't mix with the poor, black or whoever, and demand that the rest of us pay for their kids. They can exclude the expensive and troublesome - the disabled, or those who need free school dinners, for example - and then pick a curriculum which might foster Creationism, rabid capitalism or any other sort of repulsive ideology. Their kids won't ever have to talk to, play with or learn from anyone from a different background. It's a way to raise the drawbridge on the proletariat.

Meanwhile of course, these schools will have to be paid for. There isn't any spare money for extra capacity in the school system, yet we'll be paying for new buildings, new staff, the whole lot. Who'll pay? The money will have to be taken away from existing schools, making them worse.

This is simply a plot to privatise schools - back to the 1820s. Parents will found schools, and appoint profit-making companies to run them - hiring teachers, planning curricula, cleaning the toilets. Each child will be a cherubic £ sign, or be seen as a leech to be economised on: worse food, fewer teachers, fewer resources, less cleaning - anything to increase the bottom line.

I hate this initiative because it destroys the sense that we are a community, that we all have an interest in the education of everybody's children. It's an individualist view of education as a private benefit rather than a public good.

'Free' schools makes education a nasty selfish race, one to be funded by the rest of us to the advantage of those who'd like to send their children to private schools and have now hit on a way to do it for free. I want all your children (I have none) to be cared for and well-educated. I don't want parents to be set against each other in a dog-eat-dog competition in which the children of the poor, tired, inarticulate or uneducated are left to sink while the minority reinforce their privilege.

One more thing - quite an important thing:

Per Thulberg, who runs Sweden's school system on which the Tories' plans are said to be based, have said the free schools will not improve standards.

Thulberg, the director general of the Swedish National Agency for Education, said in February that the schools had "not led to better results" in Sweden.

Thulberg told BBC's Newsnight programme that where these schools had improved their results, it was because the pupils they took had "better backgrounds" than those who attended the institutions the free schools had replaced.

He said: "This competition between schools that was one of the reasons for introducing the new schools has not led to better results. The lesson is that it's not easy to find a way to continue school improvement. The students in the new schools have, in general, better standards, but it has to do with their parents and backgrounds. They come from well-educated families." 

England is ranked higher than Sweden for pupils' maths and science knowledge. In the 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (Timss), Sweden's ranking for science fell further than any other country's. The Swedes have carried out similar international comparative studies, as well as detailed national research, which confirmed a drop in standards.