Twigg: Labour won’t close Free Schools

“something no one should argue with” 

Sorry Jaime but I feel I must demur on this.
The problem, in a nutshell, is this: “equality of opportunity” as a political ambition would, if successful, allow for the replacement of an unjust hierarchy with a seemingly ‘just’ hierarchy – ‘just’ only in the sense that everyone (if a level playing field is not an impossibility) has an opportunity to achieve a privileged position, i.e. to sit at or near the top of the of hierarchical pyramid.

The end result is that we end up with as much inequality as before but are supposed to be consoled by an understanding that this unfairness was achieved by ‘fair’ means.

Surely the ideal of a democratic society must be to recognise the worth of all instead of seeking to devise the means by which the few may achieve privilege? 

There is no magic wand that transforms schools by becoming academies. There are sometimes financial advantages but also a loss of local democratic accountability. Not an issue if all is going well, but what if there are issues, if so basically you as a parent have no where you can appeal to. Academies by the way the system is being run, are forced into gerrymandering results to ensure they meet targets, this is rarely down in the best interest in the students, your daughter as a bright student will effectively face being put into for more qualifications than she needs or you will have heard of, all to boost average grade scores. Meanwhile they have to compete for students with other schools, leading to inefficient allocation of resources, long term planning problems depending on demographics and an attempt to cherry pick. The ideal student would be a bright student from a poor postcode, hopefully with divorced parents, as this will probably mean their will be only one ‘assessed’ household income, meaning they may well qualify for free school meals, but in reality will come from a better than average economic background. Any difficult kids will be left to the local comprehensive to hoover up.

The issues you have with the local authority are valid, but surely this points to a need to reform LAs and give them a good kick up the pants rather than creating a ‘market’ for education which leads to good outcomes for some, worse for others, and massive inefficiencies as we see more spaces being funded than children to go round at one point. The LA also provides some regular oversight (which again could be improved in many places) and also a number of fall back services. Just as with the health services there re question marks about what happens if an academy fails financially. The biggest question though remains about accountability, and relying on ofsted to provide this is somewhat concerning serendipitous and altogether too speculative for words.

In brief I fear we may see a situation not unlike where you see the attempt to create ‘markets’ in health care, with profit making companies trying to harvest the easy low hanging fruit (clever kids) leaving the ever financially squeezed local body to pick up the tricky cases and harder work. 

If we believe in state education then it has to provide an education for all, if you have concerns for your children, rather than trying to skew the system to favour them you should bite the bullet and pay for them to be educated privately. Ideally we would all like to see a system which educates all according to need and ability, the academy system in my humble opinion fails to do that and is simply an attempt to ‘marketise’ education to ‘drive up standards’. This misses the point about what the problems might mean and what the hell standards are and how you ‘drive’ them up. There is no basic inanimate raw material being manufactured into some simple clearly defined product, the raw material possess free will and their own agenda, the product is unclear sketchy and aspirational. Already it should be clear what a nonsense our educational reforms and dogmas have been for the last 30 years.

absolutely spot on Jaime.

The problem you encounter here is the unwavering faith that many have in the comprehensive system, despite the fact that educational standards are lower and social mobility has decreased since it was introduced.