NUT: Stop Tory market madness wrecking our schools!

Two policies together are designed to unleash market madness in our school system:
•    All schools, primary as well as secondary, will be able to become Academies run by private organisations.
•    220,000 new school places will be created in schools run by alternative providers.

The Tories claim that parents are queuing up to run schools. This is a myth. The Tories’ model is the so-called ‘free schools’ in Sweden. They are funded by the state but most are run for profit by private companies. The big question is, will the Tories allow them to they be run for profit here? The CEO of Kunsskapskolan, the largest Swedish state-funded schools-for-profit provider, Anders Hultin, has said that the Tories’ plan won’t work unless the schools are allowed to make a profit. Michael Gove has aid they won’t, but according to The Economist (4 October 2009) ‘Mr Gove says his position on profits is driven by a desire not to fracture a growing but fragile consensus within and without his party, and could be rethought if necessary.’ There is a growing lobby which will be pressing a Tory government to do so, including Mr Hultin himself, who is sponsoring two Academies in Richmond. Are these just ‘loss leaders’, waiting for a Tory government to give them the profit-making go-ahead?

The result of the combination of these two policies – turning schools into Academies and creating hundreds of new schools, many run for profit - would be devastating for the school system as we know it.
•    The creation of hundreds of new schools, all chasing the same pupils, would force many existing schools to close down for lack of numbers.
•    It would destroy the role of local authorities, which would lose many if not all of their schools, leaving an uncoordinated market-place of competing providers.
•    Local parents and citizens would lose any influence over the schools, either through the elected local council or through governing bodies, where they would be almost entirely unrepresented. Power would lie with unaccountable large private organisations running chains of schools.
•    Teachers and other school workers will also suffer because their new employers will break with national pay and conditions, in the interests of private profit.
And don’t forget all this will take place in the context of massive cuts in school spending. One certain outcome is that the existing gap between children from better-off and poorer families will widen even more.

Will market madness rule the schools?
There are two obstacles to this education market scenario. The first is a tension within Tory policy itself. It stands for business interests, but while the schools market will suit education-business companies, the big question is will there be enough private providers, and will they be capable of delivering the sort of future workforce which employers as a whole demand, or whether (as New Labour found) the market will need a strong steer from the state, creating, for example, vocational schools from age 14, as Kenneth Baker proposes with his ‘university technical college’ Academies?

But the only way to block the market takeover is mass opposition from parents, teachers and the labour movement. The NUT needs to be in the lead of a broad campaigning coalition to defend our schools against Tory attacks. It should start now, as the general election approaches. Demand that Tory and Lib Dem candidates give an unequivocal commitment that they will never support state-funded schools being run for profit. And demand of Labour candidates that they support a mass campaign against Tory marketisation and privatisation.

Richard Hatcher