Events | 2010.02.20
New schools and real parental choice | Rachel Wolf
The development of new schools has been shown to produce huge improvements in learning and the erosion of inequality
Helena Holmlund and Sandra McNally, academics at the LSE, argued this week that increasing parents\' choice of schools would not change the UK\'s "status quo" because there is "already much school choice and a diversity of provision".
The problem is that choice in England is largely a myth. At the moment the rich choose by paying school fees or moving to the right catchment area, while the poor are left with a school they are often desperately unhappy with. At the New Schools Network, we have been contacted by parents across the country who want alternatives because they cannot afford to get to a good school. The only way that can change is by allowing new schools which have the freedom, and the incentive, to offer what parents want.
Even Holmlund and McNally\'s argument about diversity of provision is, largely, untrue. Yes, there is a range of school structures but that doesn\'t translate into much difference in ethos or curriculum. There are some academies – but their independence has been restricted and they cannot offer anything significantly different.
For example, many of the parents who have contacted us would like to access a Montessori school. They can\'t do that, because they can\'t afford the fees. Montessori would like to set up state schools – but they can\'t do that because we do not, in fact, allow diversity of provision. We have a tested provider who would like to go into the poorest areas. We have parents who want to send their child to that provider\'s school. What happens? Nothing. This is mad.
What happens when you allow this kind of choice – when you give the poor, as well as the wealthy, a chance to send their child to a school they are happy with? The evidence from three different countries – Sweden, America and Canada – show that new schools perform better, that they have a positive effect on neighbouring schools and that the poorest benefit most.
The Canadian province of Alberta, which has allowed full school choice, has the highest performance of any English speaking area in the world in the international Programme for International Student Assessment league tables. In Sweden, Asa Ahlin of Uppsala University found that increasing school choice had a significant positive impact on mathematics results, and that those from immigrant backgrounds and those with learning disabilities benefited most. Mikael Sandstrom (formerly of Stockholm University and now a state secretary for the Swedish government) and Fredrik Bergstrom also found a positive effect from competition after testing more than 20,000 different variations of their model.
These findings are more than confirmed by the excellent and increasing body of evidence from the United States. Barack Obama has become a major supporter of new schools – called "charter schools" – because of their enormous impact on pupils in the poorest areas. There are too many good studies to list here – but as an example Professor Caroline Hoxby (formerly of Harvard and now at Stanford) has found that charter schools in New York reduce the rich-poor gap by 86% in maths and 66% in English. Professor Josh Angrist, of MIT, has found that Boston charter schools have "a consistently positive impact on student achievement" in both maths and English at middle and high school level. These are astonishing results for schools in areas of very high deprivation. The New Schools Network has carried out a detailed analysis of many more studies.
Increasing opportunities for the poor should be the priority for education policy. We have seen a better choice of schools transform communities in other countries. We should be giving children here that same chance.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]0/education-choice-new-schools
