Parents choosing school choice
by Max Wind-Cowie
Michael Gove has good reason to feel pretty pleased with himself this morning. The Guardian reports that as many as 300 separate groups of parents have answered the Shadow Schools Secretary’s call to action on schools. These groups of ordinary mums and dads have proclaimed themselves ready and willing to set up new schools if the Tories come to power and implement Gove’s education policies. In many ways, these parents are vindicating his confidence in the willingness of the public to take up opportunities for involvement and to step up to the mark when they perceive failings in what is already on offer.
It is an oft-repeated critique of school choice that parents ‘don’t want to choose’. Parents, we are told, just want a good school at the bottom of every road. Well, this may be true but the reality is that parents are also deeply unhappy with the admissions system as stands. This year alone, no less than 62,000 mums and dads have appealed against the school places offered to their children. That is a huge number of families being let down by the British education system and a huge increase on the year before.
Just to be clear, it’s not that I think that all these complaints are entirely straightforward cases of ‘parent-knows-best’. Some of them will be mums and dads who have been offered a place at a perfectly good school but have their hearts set on somewhere else. But the fact remains that we have an education system that leaves large numbers of parents disappointed enough to lodge and fight appeals.
It is these parents, one suspects, that are the constituency to which Gove’s plan appeals. They might well prefer a world in which there was an abundance of excellent schools but they know that the reality is very different. They are also, it appears, willing to get involved when it is demanded of them.
If the Conservative Party can demonstrate, through its schools policy, the powerful effect of user-involvement then perhaps there is hope for progressive conservative reforms more generally. But in order to make the case convincingly, they must be prepared to hand over real power to these parents; without that this policy will be little more than a gimmick that will leave those who stand up to be counted feeling let down and underappreciated. Gove has to take the enthusiasm of those 300 parents and use it to show the other 61,000 what can be achieved with a bit of imagination and a lot of hard-work.
Ben Smith
The Guardian recently published an article about why choice in education increases inequality:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/nov/20/parents-school-choice-social-divide
but then that's OK for the conservatives, isn't it? As long as individuals are allowed to choose for themselves, it doesn't actually matter if the poorest section of society aren't exercising their right to choose.
Education, unlike health, is a positional good, so choice in health is OK because you being healthier than me doesn't effect my perceived value to society, yet if you allow parents choice in education, what inevitably happens is the most assertive parents wrangle the best deal for their children, and kids who go to the best primary schools will in turn go to the best universities, get the best jobs and eventually have kids of their own and make sure they go to the best schools.
Max Wind-Cowie
Thank you both for your comments.
Bert, I agree that the policy must not be used to 'bash' the private education system but I disagree on top-ups. If private schools want to either reduce their fees to the level of state provision or open sister institutions in order to cater to ordinary parents then great. But if we allow top-ups on the school 'voucher' then we are in danger of constructing a system which allows schools that are mostly funded by the state to exclude poor pupils on the basis of wealth. The proposed funding stands at around £5,000 - if you're correct that a year at Eton costs £30,000 then taking £5,000 off the price is unlikely to make it much more accessible to poor parents.
Ben, fair point. One important facet of the Conservative policy has to be building capacity to choose in poorer parents. But educational inequality is already a reality for thousands of parents and children and we have a system that, whilst built on the idea of school choice, fails on 2 out of 3 measures (see Luke Sibieta's report for the IFS). Whilst, as a conservative, it's true that I value choice that does not mean that I approve of it a-contextually. Choice is valuable because it makes individuals more powerful and makes them more responsible but it also provides a mechanism for recognising and dealing with failure - which drives up standards across the system. If we want to construct a school system that has an inbuilt punishment for failure then we need real choice, accompanied by empowered and informed parents.
BooneJENNY
That is cool that people are able to get the credit loans and it opens completely new possibilities.
Bert
I agree that Mr Gove's plan has many merits, and you're right to point out that the number of parents complaining implies a system that is letting far too many people down. Of course, it is vital that if this policy is enacted it is not used as a way of bashing private schools. If anything, it would seem to me, this could be used to broaden access to some of the best educational institutions in the country. Parents should be allowed to top-up the vouchers so that a year at Eton (regular retail price £30,000) can be reduced to reasonable levels for parents of bright children.