An education industry

Anders Hultin, who helped design the Swedish educational model which has influenced Tory thinking, warned Tories recently that their hopes might founder if they continued to advocate an education reform which omitted the profit motive. Messrs Gove and Cameron have both accepted the warning.

This might sound very strange to progressives, in that education would become in those parts which adopted the idea of academies in effect an industry.

It should be pointed out that the plans by the two major parties to use the private sector as well as the charitable sector in the provision welfare and getting people back to work, do envisage management fees. It is also true of those agencies currently supplying staff to schools, or even managing schools.

The advantages of profit is at least two-fold:

1) To give successful new schools, i.e. those over subscribed, some capital with which to open new schools to cope with demand.

2) To allow funds which would enable experiment and entrepreneurship. Without profit charities could become complacent, and see waiting lists as a sign of success and a cause for self-satisfaction, rather than a spur to develop other schools. We were an entrepreneurial country until fairly recently. By this means, like the Swedes we could become a world leader in the development of education and improve the outcomes for all young people and not restrict success to the rich only!

The Swedish experience offers examples of the truth of both these.

It may sound strange to talk about an education industry, but it probably needs such a revolution to overcome the vested interest in the current monolithic, top-down failing service we have today.