School vouchers convince me...

...but they have yet to convince James Graham.

An excellent debate is brewing at Quaequam blog, however. I urge all who have strong views on education, liberalism, capitalism and statism to hurry there and make your points.

I urge all who have weak or no opinions to go there and learn

I urge the rest of you to go there and read other posts about 18 Doughty Street or what nonsense fear of Wi-Fi radiation is.

Set parents free to improve the education of their children

Three days at home looking after a convalescing wife has dulled the senses, so my blogging has lapsed.

However, I know how much my regular reader needs their dose of Polemic. So here’s another spanner to throw into the works.

A couple of weeks ago the Economist published a useful round-up of recent studies into school choice. “Choice” is fast becoming a dirty word in the UK, tainted with the vile odour of Tony Blair. That is a shame, and also a misunderstanding. The so-called “Choice Agenda” pursued by the current government is a classic New Labour fudge: like the choices offered by Henry Ford, the citizen can send their child to any school they like, or have their maladies treated at any hospital, as long as it is state-run. They cannot take their hard-paid-for entitlement to free education or healthcare and utilise it in a non-state school or hospital, even if that establishment offers better, swifter, cheaper education or care.

The Liberal Democrats have made some progress, but they are still struggling: our (still extant) manifesto offers “diagnosis by the quickest practical route, public or private”, but fails to extend the same offer to treatment. This is not only a shame but also illogical: if there is value in allowing GPs to send patients to any provider of diagnostics, why is there not the same value in sending patients to any provider of treatment? The answer is, of course, that the benefits are the same, and the sooner we allow patients to seek treatment from the provider that best suits their needs – as determined by them – the better our national healthcare will be.

As I have noted previously, in that haven of Social Democracy that is Sweden, parents are already freer than almost anywhere else in the world to use their tax-funded education vouchers to educate their children anywhere they choose. Sweden has a functional literacy rate of 100 per cent, which puts our education establishment to shame, as a quarter of UK school leavers cannot read and write.

The reason that the Economist article is of such interest, however, is that it establishes what campaigners for school choice have been arguing since 1955: that choice benefits not only those who exercise their right to choose, but also those who do not, and who remain in the state sector. Those who oppose freedom argue that they would be left behind, stuck in state schools as the clever and the driven elbow their way into the best schools. Why those who are clever and driven should be condemned to uniform mediocrity I have never understood, but what matters is that the evidence suggests that these fears are unfounded.

Quoth the Economist: “Caroline Hoxby, an economist at Harvard University… has shown that when American public schools must compete for their students with schools that accept vouchers, their performance improves. Swedish researchers say the same.” So school choice, it seems, benefits all school pupils; even those whose parents do not, themselves, exercise it. As the Economist concludes, “It seems that those who work in state schools are just like everybody else: they do better when confronted by a bit of competition.”

School discipline to be influenced by race

Racism is racism no matter what form it takes. Discrimination is not defined by treating members of a group worse than others, but by treating them differently. Irrespective of the fact that to treat one group better is to treat another less well, it remains discrimination even if the treatment of two groups is equal, but distinct. “Separate but equal” were the watchwords of American segregation (though in practice there was precious little equality).

So it is with shock and surprise that I discovered that the latest guidance on school discipline published by the Department for Education and Skills specifically advises schools to “take account of a range of individual pupil needs when developing and implementing their behaviour policies” including “groups defined by Ofsted as ‘at risk’ within the education system [such as] minority ethnic and faith groups [and] travellers”.

The whole subject of defining entire races or religious groups as ‘at risk’ is deeply troubling, not least because nobody ever seems to define what they are ‘at risk’ of suffering, doing or becoming. The underlying suggestion is that they are at risk of not fitting into the round hole drilled for their square bodies by policy-makers and the intellectuals who influence them.

How is this to be put into practice? On the one hand, the DfES guidance emphasises “the importance of sensitivity to individual needs”, as though teachers are unaware that their charges are individuals as opposed to homogenous automata. This patronising advice reiterates the belief that Whitehall bureaucrats are needed to tell teachers and nurses how to deliver their service. One wonders what the point of all that training and education was!

On the other hand, a series of warnings are given to take account of “cultural norms” and to avoid discomfort to children whose cultures take great offence at public humiliation. This is a very dangerous precedent. School rules are a form of law, and for them to have any meaning they must be applied fairly. To allow one child to get away with being loud while another is disciplined is discriminatory – especially so if it is based not on the child’s uniqueness but upon views of how a child of that “culture” is expected to behave. To discipline children in different ways because of preconceived notions of how children of a certain type (colour, faith) might react is racism.

This issue goes to the heart of the “multicultural society”. Being multicultural is a recognition that a hundred different languages are spoken in the home; a hundred different forms of dress are worn in the street. Different gods are worshipped and different festivals celebrated, and they are they are worshipped and celebrated in different ways. But if a society is to be fair, its members must be treated equally; the law – even local laws of public institutions – applied irrespective of race or religion. This is not the Middle Ages, where Jews were subject to a different law from Christians, and the religious from the secular. The law is blind for a reason. It is blind so that even though individuals might discriminate, the law never does. For all our sakes let it remain so.

"That's quite enough Dyslexogate, thank you"

David Aaronovitch has written an excellent op ed. on "The Ruth Kelly Affair".

As well as exposing the real hypocrisy - journalists who tut-tut about her decision when over half of them privately educate their own children - he takes a swipe at Labour back-benchers who put ideology over the interests of the child (the point I made yesterday).

I know a comment piece is good if it is both informative and humorous. Enjoy.

Losing sight of the child

There is something unseemly about the row that has erupted in the Labour Party over Ruth Kelly’s decision to send her child to a private school.

Labour’s commitment to state provision has always made it difficult for Labour ministers to school their children privately. Yet the fact remains that private education can provide better outcomes for children that state schools.

This is not always the case: past Labour administrations were crammed full of and led by grammar school boys who had got the best state education by passing their 11+ exams (or their parents paid for the privilege). But since Labour dismantled the two-tier grammar school system, our current Labour Prime Minister has been drawn from the ranks of the private schools.

In fact, debate still rages over whether private education always provides better outcomes for children. Every few weeks another study emerges arguing either that children from private schools enjoy better outcomes as a result of their education, or that there is no discernable difference.

Whether or not parents should have a right to educate their children outside the state system, and whether parents should be allowed to take the money their children would have costed the state and spend it elsewhere if they see this as in their child’s interests are important but macro-level debates. What is so disgusting about the reaction of Labour members to Ms. Kelly’s decision is that it shows absolutely no concern for the welfare of the child.

Take these quotes in today’s Times:
Ian Gibson (Norwich North): "I think it’s wrong. You should set an example as a minister and support your local school. It is a slap in the face for the teachers and the pupils in the school that the child has been taken out of."
Ann Cryer, (Keighley): "MPs should try to get state provision for their children because that is what we believe in."
Lynne Jones (Birmingham Selly Oak): "I think it goes against the principles of the Labour Party. It makes me wonder about the sort of people who achieve high office who are in New Labour."
Margaret Hodge, Trade and Industry minister: "Given our commitment to state education, it is an issue of public interest."

Not one of these Members of Parliament even qualified their statements by suggesting that Ms. Kelly’s main concern as a parent should be the welfare of her children. A government minister may choose to sacrifice their own interests for their career – say, by spending time on an NHS waiting list rather than paying to go private. For a minister to sacrifice their child’s interests would be disgraceful. For the minister’s colleagues to berate her for not doing so is disgusting.

Ms. Kelly’s child struggles with dyslexia. Whether or not state education should be able to provide her child with the best schooling is beside the point. The child’s parent has made an informed choice about what is in the interests of her child. We should respect that choice.

We may of course cite that choice as proof that Labour is failing to provide state education that meets the needs of children with special educational needs, but we should not condemn Ms. Kelly for recognising that fact and responding by doing what she can for her child. It does not matter that she was once Education Secretary. What matters is the welfare of her child.

That is what the likes of Gibson, Cryer, Jones and Hodge fail to appreciate. Too wrapped up in the battle of ideology, they have lost sight of the child.