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SCHOOLS REFORM: a guide to the debate April 2, 2009 Julian Astle

SCHOOLS REFORM: a guide to the debate April 2, 2009 Julian Astle. The Labour government has combined heavy investment with heavy intervention, particularly in under-performing schools. Policy led by targets, backed up by assessment, inspection and a range of school improvement strategies.

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SCHOOLS REFORM: a guide to the debate April 2, 2009 Julian Astle

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  1. SCHOOLS REFORM:a guide to the debateApril 2, 2009Julian Astle

  2. The Labour government has combined heavy investment with heavy intervention, particularly in under-performing schools.

  3. Policy led by targets, backed up by assessment, inspection and a range of school improvement strategies • Education Action Zones • Excellence in Cities • Fresh Start • London Challenge / National Challenge • Academies

  4. Significant improvement recorded, and gap between most and least deprived schools closing a little However, low attainment still widespread and educational inequality high by international standards

  5. This has led both the opposition parties to propose: • A more explicitly redistributive approach to education funding with the introduction of a ‘Pupil Premium’ • Radical supply side liberalisation to bring new providers into the maintained system.

  6. Pupil Premium – attaches additional funding, per capita, to disadvantaged students • Similar to Julian le Grand’s ‘positively discriminating voucher’ • Similar system used in Netherlands

  7. Pupil Premium designed to: • Give schools in wealthy areas an incentive to admit more disadvantaged pupils • Give schools in poor areas the additional resources they need to educate large numbers of deprived pupils

  8. Important questions remain: • Which pupils should receive it? How should ‘disadvantage’ be defined? • How big should the Pupil Premium be? • New money or from within existing schools budget?

  9. Understandable concern that increased funding will not deliver commensurate increase in pupil performance if not coupled with structural reform; that we are approaching the limits of what can be achieved by ‘flogging the system’ from the centre.

  10. No return to the ‘secret garden’ but far more freedom for schools and far less micro-management from government… • Slimmed down curriculum • Less national testing • Fewer directives and looser budgetary control

  11. Most importantly, both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats committed to ‘opening up’ the maintained school system to new providers, through: • Expansion of Academies programme • Introduction of Swedish-style ‘Free Schools’

  12. Academies: private providers invited to take over/replace an existing ‘failing’ school. • Free schools: new providers to establish state-funded schools at time, and in location, of their choice, regardless of ‘surplus places’.

  13. Academies – good progress in raising standards. GCSE results improving at twice national average and, on average, three times oversubscribed …but have not increased overall capacity – hence only limited additional choice for parents and competition between schools. • Free schools programme designed not to replace failing schools, but to compete with them, and with the c. 80 per cent of non-failing schools.

  14. Again, important questions remain with regard to Free Schools: • Who meets capital costs? • Allowed to make a profit? • Planning system an obstacle? • Licence conditions: No selection? No top-up fees? Adherence to national curriculum? • Who withdraws licence if performance dips? • What relationship with local/central government?

  15. Central planning vs. market reform: a false choice.In a perfect world, accountability would flow downwards from schools to parents AND upwards from schools to government. In the UK, problem is lack of accountability to parents. In Sweden, opposite problem exists. So while our politicians seek to emulate the Swedes, their politicians are copying us.

  16. SCHOOLS REFORM:a guide to the debateApril 2, 2009Julian Astle

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