A Case for School Choice
by Jonty Olliff-Cooper
In all the excitement over the Gurkahs and MPs’ expenses this week, it was easy to miss Gordon Brown’s conversion to school choice. ‘Choice’ is short hand for switching funding the supply of school places, to funding demand. This means that state schools get paid for each pupil they educate but parents choose the school they want. If there is not enough space (insufficient supply), new schools open up. If schools underperform, parents flee them and, just like a business, they go bust.
Choice is attacked for entrenching social divisions. Critics say pointy-elbowed, middle class parents would push their kids into the best schools, leaving kids from the estate down the road to settle for leftovers. Teaching unions hate it warning of back door privatisation. Others argue that choice will never work in rural areas, where there is only one school to choose from.
Both are wrong. Progressives should support choice, for five reasons:
1. The nightmare picture of middle classes grabbing all the good school places under choice already happens– ‘selection by mortgage’. If you want a good school place, you buy it by moving to the right catchment area.
2. Choice can be made progressive by skewing the funding per child so schools get more cash if they accept poorer children, as the Conservatives and Lib Dems have proposed.
3. Past choice systems have been hard to navigate, usually resulting in middle class parents cracking the system, leaving others behind. But the internet changes that. Websites make it easier to compare statistics on school performance and make it easy to compare qualitative information too.
4. We know choice works in rural areas, because its most successful application has been Sweden, a country of thousands of dispersed villages.
5. Choice goes a long way. Julian LeGrand, who is on the Demos Advisory Council, has demonstrated that in health, even if only 10 percent of patients choose where to have their operation, that galvanizes the rest of the system to raise its game.
Our current education system is deeply unfair. Progressives should hold Gordon Brown to his promises this week.
Faizal Farook
Oops, - that should have been 'there has been mixed levels of research' not 'little robust research' - that would be inaccurate (there has been limited research on choice in primary schools, but a fair amount on secondary). As far as I'm aware, research at either level fails to shows a definitive link between choice and standards.
Jonty Olliff-Cooper
Thanks Faisal. I would love to hear your ideas on the radical rethink. Quick reply:
1. The evidence is very strong in health. Julian LeGrand gave a sneak peek of his persuasive new health research at the PM’s Strategy Unit last month, [http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/strategy/seminars.aspx]. Obviously, that is not education, but the effects were powerful across all demographics.
2. Research on results cannot always pick up more important qualitative aspects of education. As an ex-teacher, I would say greater freedom for the school will mean much better education in ways that you cannot measure except by sitting in on a class.
3. It is not as if the system is perfect now. 40% of working class white teenagers not getting five GCSEs for example. There is a cost in not changing.
4. Choice does not necessarily require over-capacity. Providers can take over a failing school, as well as build a rival next door. So easy switching is important, and often forgotten. (As in my post, which we try to keep super brief).
Manpreet Singh
The evidence for health is strong, but limited. Choice in health has disproportionately affected the middle classes; patient attendance to clinics has fallen since the choose and book scheme has been introduced, costs have risen and the effect is that services to the poorest (and least able to transport themselves / choose an alternative) is declining. [There is an excellent series of bmj articles on the topic, which I can't access because I'm not in an academic domain at the moment]
You talk about access to internet changing the middle class bias. But again, internet access and use is highest amongst the educated middle class:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=8
You talk about greater freedom for schools, but that is not an inevitable consequence of school choice.
Faizal Farook
Overcapacity is essential to choice. Firstly, all those pupils who want to go the good school need to be able to get a place, so at the top end you need enough capacity to take them. A school roll will fluctuate over time and therefore for you to be certain you can take everyone who wants to attend you need to plan in more places than will probably be filled. At the bottom end, there will be overcapacity in underpopulated schools because no-one will be going there. There are two ways private providers can take over failing schools, either as management or as a whole unit. Under a management take-over, the state is still paying to run an under-attended facility and in the case of a whole school take-over the private provider will need to be able to get a return i.e. have enough pupils attending to cover the running costs and make a profit. This is a pretty risky investment meaning a) the state would probably have to subsidize entry initially to make it attractive and b) mean that a lot of schools won't be attractive enough prospects to warrant take-over so failing state schools would then have a massive funding shortfall, thus making it even harder for them to improve services. Finally, the implication is that you only 'choose' once i.e. at Year 7 entry, but there is no reason why this would be the case. Admittedly, parents won't be seeking to move their children every year but there could well be more movement than you are anticipating - another reason why schools would need flexibility through overcapacity.
I agree that change is needed but I don't at all see how choice will directly improve qualitative aspects of education. It will create a system level change in allowing more children to access already good provision, but it isn't related in any direct way to improving what happens in the classroom in a poor quality school.
I agree with you that there are children who are being shamefully under-served by our current education system, and I also agree real substantive change is needed. I also agree that there is a role for private providers of state education. What I disagree with is the extent to which choice is the best way to tackle the most pressing problems, and the degree to which choice advocates overlook the negative effects of marketised forces in a system that isn't a market.
Faizal Farook
There is no mention here about what introducing school choice is for, yet there is an assumption that it will work. I'll assume it is a) to raise standards and b) because choice and freedom are good things.
When it comes to standards, there is no definitive evidence that competition and choice has any effect - there has been little robust research and what there is indicates both negative and positive effects. There is also very mixed evidence about the effect of choice on segregation by income, ability and ethnicity.
There are lots of practical changes needed for an effective choice system - money will have to follow pupils, LEA control over school funding and organization removed, existing barriers to school expansion will have to be removed and sufficient incentives provided, the introduction of a school bus system/free transport arrangement to enable children from low incomes to be able to travel to chosen school some distance away. Most importantly you would need a robust failure management system.
There are also to bigger points here that rarely get discussed when people talk about choice:
1) Choice requires over-capacity - at a time when public services are soon going to be facing huge cuts, I don't see how this will be feasible.
2) The idea of a system which has both choice and equality is a bit of a pipedream. Choice will inevitably lead to uneven provision. The real question for progressives is where the line is drawn between fair opportunities for all and enabling 'the good' to be good. This keeps getting ducked in favour of the having cake and eating it approach.
Personally I think we need a radical rethink of our education system, including introducing elements of 'marketisation', if we want to raise the quality of our education. But 'choice' as a mechanism is neither sufficient or proven, and it is probably not even the most important issue.