Deregulated schools – warnings from abroad

Next time someone tells you charter schools are about choice and that privatising the education system is a good move, you might want to point them to the other sides of the story.

Look at the job the power companies have done – Privatisation is not necessarily better for the consumer.

And in this case, the consumers are our children – the next generation.

And whilst some politicians and businesses are all for a privatised education system, teachers and parents are not.  Ask yourself why that might be?  Last time I looked, teachers and parents weren’t in it for the money…

Look to what has happened and is happening in overseas public education systems that have been ‘reformed’:

Sweden

“The Swedish school system is often cited by Michael Gove as a model of best practice. However, like America its experiment with for-profit education has had disastrous consequences.

In May, JB Education, one of the largest for-profit education providers in the country went bust leaving the future of 10,000 pupils in limbo.

Ibrahim Baylan, the education spokesman for Sweden’s opposition Social Democratic party, says closures should come as a warning to the UK not to slavishly adopt the Swedish model, where private companies can set up profit-making free schools, paid for by the state but with little government oversight:

“Before you do something like this you have to really, really think about how you set up the system. The system here is not working as it’s supposed to work. Nobody could foresee that so many private equity companies would be in our school system as we have today.””

USA

“Despite consuming billions every year in taxpayer-funded student loans for-profit universities have a terrible record of success. Only one in five students graduate, and students at for-profit colleges are much more likely to default on their loans.  This is partly a result of their recruitment practices, with for-profit colleges often targeting people (including the homeless) who simply do not have the financial resources to pay loans back.

The US’ experience of allowing for-profit companies to run schools (often described as the CharterSchool movement) has also been mired in controversy.

Former Under-Secretary of Education, Diane Ravitch, who served under George Bush and Bill Clinton and was an initial supporter of Charter Schools, came up with the following summary:

“Charter schools are leading us to having a dual school system again. We’re going back to the period before Brown v. Board of Education, but the differentiation in the future will be based on class instead of race.

“Corporations aren’t going to put more money into the school, they’re only going to make money. This should make people in America angry. There ought to be a public uprising about this effort to destroy public education.””

England

“In a new report, the Public Accounts Select Committee questions the role of the Education Funding Agency with regard to school funding. The Chair of the Committee said:

“[The Agency] needs to do more to address potential conflicts of interest in academies.

We were concerned that individuals with connections to both academy trusts and private companies may have benefited from their position when providing trusts with goods and services. The Agency has reviewed 12 such cases but it is likely that many more exist and have gone unchallenged”.”

New Zealand

Be very clear that what is happening in New Zealand is part of the global education reform movement (GERM) and is not isolated.

Worldwide, education systems are being broken up and handed over to businesses so that your taxes can go into private hands.  Education does not improve, Students do not fare better.

A fragmented, secretive, and privatised system is not the best way.

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Source: http://educationnotforsale.org/about-the-campaign/