We don’t need no educashion: A proposal for radical reform

I WENT TO a private independent school, as did my children, and now my grandchildren. On occasion I have been asked why. My answer has generally been to say that I do not want the government educating my children. I know my father felt the same, and I believe my children also think the same thing.

This is heresy to the equalising left. They say that I am buying privileged advantage and access to social status (if you pay for a well-known school). I have been accused of this.
My first response is I have never lived in a large house, never bought a new car, and never taken more than two weeks’ holiday in a year. I chose to spend my money on education. The response is that it is still “unfair” that I bought advantage.

To which my response is: “So your belief in equality is really about equalisation of both access and outcomes, which you recognise as reduced if I choose the state sector. This is deeply inimical to my freedom and involves coercion of both my children’s thoughts and my actions. That’s deeply unfair.”

I recognise that I will not win this battle with a mind holding an egalitarian collectivist worldview, and I also recognise that for many families a collectively provided and subsidised education is all that they can possibly afford. However, the question arises as to whether there is an arrangement of public social choices that could bring us closer together.

present political pressures are to punish any free school or fee-paying providers

In Scotland, the arrangements for education are peculiar. We have our long cultural tradition of “free” education, accessible to all. Indeed, I am party to this; one of my ancestors was the son of a shepherd who went to the University of Glasgow. Paradoxically, in Edinburgh we have a capital city where around twenty-five per cent of school pupils are privately educated. We have a small but well-regarded independent sector. We also have a small cohort of pupils from remote islands who board on the mainland. And of course, we have a high proportion of fee-paying English higher education students learning alongside non-paying Scots.

So, we have some plurality, but it is not structured happily – power politics prevail. The Blob controls the subsidised sector, and present political pressures are to punish any free school or fee-paying providers. What would a reformer suggest?

The answer has to lie with the parent-teacher relationship. Curriculum control, funding control, and strategic control has to be wrested from the Blob. But how?

There are some who adopt George Bernard Shaw’s adage “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”. I think this is disrespectfully scornful of the teaching profession. Becoming a teacher is a genuine choice, in essence, “those who could do, often teach”. Teaching as a profession dedicated to instilling learning involves a lot more than mere knowledge – it’s about knowing how to make others know.

We should build on this dedication, along with a similar embedded dedication in all parents to obtain the best future for their children. We have to find a way to develop the drive of these two complementary tendencies by allowing the parent/teacher relationship to develop. And we need to be radical; it’s a disgrace that Scotland’s education outcomes have become so poor – our children are being let down. Here’s what needs to be done.

the key is to make the central state get out of the way

All existing schools should be given control of both their capital and daily operating budgets with the proviso that they adopt boards of governors, paid or unpaid at the school’s choice, and chosen by the teachers and parents of the school. They should thereby be removed from local authority financial control and administration. (They are likely to need some of the expertise of local authority education staff for budgeting control, but they should be free to choose where and at what terms these staff are recruited.)

All schools should be allowed to charge fees for some services beyond a minimal core educational offer. In addition, they should be allowed to raise capital as they wish, subject to their governors’ consent. A no bail-out rule would apply with respect to any borrowing. They can choose to be profit-making, non-profit, co-operatives or mutual entities as they wish.

The setting up of new Free Schools should be permitted. There should be no strictures on their establishment based on perceived demand. This requires the repeal, or amendment, of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.

All employees of Education Scotland (curriculum) and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (qualifications) and His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Education in Scotland(HMIE) should be put on notice that their contracts will end within one year.

Each school should be required to provide information as to its educational aims, admission policies and child protection policies. No regulatory guidance would be given over and above these broad-brush headings. The focus on this should be on how parents and teachers interact under the duty-of-care oversight of the board of governors.

Schools would be subject to the mandatory requirement that they obtain a third-party quality assessment of their educational service offer. This third party would not be a monopoly, but one of a small number of assessors adopted by agreement of the schools themselves. Those assessors would be controlled by a light touch oversight similar to the criteria for a notice of complaint with the present regulation of independent schools.

Should schools wish to contract services from any of the quangos of the Blob, they are free to do so. These services must be priced and costs made transparent to parents. The quangos, in return, are not protected as monopoly assessors but act as commercial service providers to schools as demand permits. This includes inspectors.

There would be no centrally mandated curriculum, nor qualifications. Both of these characteristics of educational provision would emerge – with and without commonalities – from the developing school learning system operating without state interference.

As so often, the key is to make the central state get out of the way, leaving parents incentivised to obtain the best outcomes from the teaching profession, while teachers are professionalised to provide the services they have signed up to deliver to parents within a competitive schooling industry.

Finally, it is not worthy in this for leftist socialists to point to financially struggling and not very clever parents and say that they will be left behind with only sink schools to provide for their children. Over-centralised control of the teaching profession, the curriculum, qualification structures, and the fabric of schools has proven to create very little improvement for our children, with Scotland’s position in international ratings plunging rapidly.

If campaigning egalitarian leftists really want to improve schooling and create a learned populace, their route – and indeed duty – is clear: join a plural, actively adjusting and innovating, parent- and child-centric mutualised system, free to discover the best pathway for every child to grasp their opportunities as best they can, supported by teachers dedicated to just that.