I very month brings news of further - inroads by private companies into
the school system. In the past month:
• The government announced its London Strategy - by 2008 at least 30 new city academies and 20 new secondaries.
Surrey Local Education Authority (LEA) announced it is forming a joint venture company with VT Education, a subsidiary of Vosper Thorneycroft, the defence and shipbuilding company, to run schools services in Surrey and to bid for contracts in other authorities.
• Jarvis plc was awarded a 3-year contract by the Department for Education and Science (DIES), worth £l.9 million, to help rescue the 700 allegedly worst performing secondary schools.
30 more city academies in London means 30 more multimillionaires can buy a top-ofthe-range state school for a bargain £2 million and nothing more to pay - the government pays for the refurbishing and the running costs, and the LEA is forced to hand over the premises to the company.
At present city academies are not a profit-making investment. They rely on a bizarre mixture of motives by donors - charity, selfaggrandisement, New Labour cronyism, commercial loss-leader market-testing and religious fundamentalism. But this well will run dry, and the logic of Labour's policy is that sooner or later business will be invited to run city academies for profit.
Of course the source of the profit would be the exploitation of teachers and other school workers, illustrated by the attempt by the new 'chief executive' of the crisis-ridden Greig academy in Haringey to get it out of trouble by imposing longer working hours - the NUT is balloting for strike action. • •
Meanwhile, the creation of 20 new secondary schools in London is a real opportunity to make profit from running schools, and under the 2002 Education Act LEAs have to invite bids from private companies.
It's a golden opportunity for a new innovation in PFI - consortia which bid to build the school, manage the school premises and facilities, and employ the teachers, which is exactly what the school-for-profit companies are demanding. • • • • Business running LEAS, LEAS Our ublic Meeting the employment of teachers by the PFI consortia
Schools will be encouraged, by the application of carrots and sticks, to form federations of schools in partnership with private companies.
A key focus will be 14-19 provision, given Blair's concern for education for economic competitiveness. . The vehicle here is the Learning and Skills Council, which has taken over all funding of 16-19 education, including school sixth forms, through 47 regional councils, and is extending its influence over schooling from age 14.
Having marginalised LEAs, which don't even have the right of representation on local LSCs, they are well-placed to lever in education-for-profit companies
The 'new forms of co-payment', while politically risky and as yet unclear, are neces sary to create market-like behaviour, reduce public spending and ensure sufficient profitability: A twin-track strategy for
The first task is a defensive one - to continue to work towards an effective national campaign - long over-due - against any further erosion of public education, as part of a broader public sector campaign against privatisation through the outsourcing and pub lic-private partnershipping-out of core service functions.
But defence is not enough. The left urgently needs to develop and popularise an alternative vision for the improvement of state education in the interests of working people and their children which doesn't depend on the private sector.
For example, we don't need hit squads staffed by expensive consultants, we need new ways for teachers to collaborate and innovate across schools and with communities - a revived and reconstructed professionalism. The key issue here is democracy and control.
What is our alternative to the never very democratic accountability offered by local education authorities, now largely superseded by the centrally-dictated managerialist notion of accountability through performance targets and test scores, which effectively insulates education-for-profit companies from any popular influence?
Does the experience of local participatory democracy exemplified by Porto Alegre provide the basis for rethinking strategy in the British context, as a bridge between defensive struggles today and a mass popular movement for education tomorrow?
And if not, what does? These are ques tions the left cannot put off any longer.
(For more on education and participatory
democracy in southern Brazil, email me on