We're about to turn our backs on good examples
School choice growing in USA and internationally; how we pay for for-profit school choice in Africa....and Labour's determination to buck the trend.
This one has a good punchline, please read to the end. It’s about school choice and how the rest of the world is moving in the right direction….while Labour propose the opposite.
In his blog, Dan Mitchell writes approvingly of school choice developments in US states. It’s based on this report, the American Legal Exchange Council (ALEC) Index of State Education Freedom, which starts:
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked a complete reimagining of how and where students are taught around the country. More importantly, the pandemic sparked a national realization that our current “one-size-fits-all” system of public education simply does not work for too many students. While there are plenty of students who perform at their highest level in their local public schools, there are also many who would perform better in an alternate educational environment. Parents are best positioned to know where and how their children learn best, so we must empower them with as many educational choices as possible
Amen. Teaching (unlike, say, brain surgery, cancer care) isn’t rocket science. We’ve all been to school and can remember what makes for a good teacher, a good classroom, a good school. At work, we’ve learned, developed, watched others coach and lead, and coached and led others. This is not to say we could all step into a primary school class tomorrow and start teaching them to read, or to multiply….but we could pretty quickly identify whether the teacher is any good and whether the children are engaged.
Where choice exists, parents have the incentive to learn how to identify good schools. School choice empowers parents to drive up standards - not only in their “preferred” schools, but across the board.
So why shouldn’t we have choice?
Who has school choice?
So here’s the (growing) list of US states with a direct school choice program in the form of “education scholarship account programs”, where dollars follow students’ parents’ choices:
Montana, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New Hampshire,….and Texas reportedly on the way!
For an international perspective, there’s also school choice in
Canada, Sweden, Chile, Netherlands
As I wrote here, France, Germany and Denmark have a variety of private-sector provisions that support school choice within state-funded provision - like a mix of grammar schools and academies.
We love school choice in poor countries
Another excellent read is The Beautiful Tree, where James Tooley explores private education in the slums of Nigeria, China, Ghana, Kenya and India - finding that fee-charging, profit-seeking, low-cost private schools are often strongly preferred by poor people, and deliver better outcomes, compared to free state- or NGO-funded alternatives. Based on Tooley’s evidence, DFID started to spend British taxpayers’ money on private providers, using vouchers, so that parents in poorer countries could have…school choice. How sensible.
British taxpayers’ money spent on school choice in the boo-hiss profit-seeking private sector…abroad, but not at home. Get over it and move on…
Labour’s VAT plan means less choice
So moving on: this blog just calls for good schools, as many good schools as possible. Taxing independent education harms good schools. It stands to reduce choice in three ways:
Fewer parents will be able to afford private education; they will be forced into state provision which certainly won’t offer much, if any choice. At best, there won’t be places in over-subscribed “good” state schools. At worst places may not be (1) locally available at all (2) manageable without significant change to their domestic and professional circumstances.
If and when some private schools close, even parents willing and able to absorb the VAT will lose the choice to do so; some of those parents will also be forced into state provision
Parents currently unable or unwilling to pay fees will face greater future competition for their “preferred” places at
freetaxpayer-funded grammar schools, religious schools, academies, free schools and top catchment areas; a greater proportion will in turn be disappointed. Those places will become even more financially exclusive than they already are.
Which countries’ example to follow?
So we could follow the example of 19 US states. Or we could follow the example of Canada, Chile, Sweden, Netherlands, or Germany, France and Denmark. Or we could offer more British children what we’ve paid for some African children to enjoy.
Instead of subsidising education as mainstream economics insists (explained by me here,) Labour want to tax education and reduce school choice.
They want to join the list of countries that tax education and reduce school choice.
Here’s the list of countries that tax education and reduce school choice.