Tomorrow, a new school?

ESTELLE MORRIS, a popular former education secretary and teacher, has observed that, for the past three decades, education policy in Britain has been shaped more by political expediency than by evidence of what actually works. To his credit, the current education secretary, Michael Gove, trawled the world while he was in opposition, looking for proven strategies to boost standards in England's ailing schools. The evidence from Sweden was that state-funded, independently run schools established at the behest of parents not only raised standards in their own classrooms but also lifted the performance of neighbouring schools forced to compete with them. This was the inspiration for the reforms that Mr Gove now proposes.

Sweden is not, of course, the only country that permits such schools to challenge state provision; the Netherlands and many American states do too. But Sweden is a particularly useful exemplar for a right-wing party keen to reassure centrist voters of the merits of market-based reforms.

Mr Gove wants to fix what he describes as “one of the most stratified and segregated school systems in the developed world”. A single fact reflects the problem: the number of poor state-educated boys all over England who gained top grades in exams taken at the age of 18 is smaller than the number of boys from a single independent school (Eton) who did likewise. His goal is to raise standards in state schools by allowing competition to flourish.

The policy is not popular within the serried ranks of state education, but the evidence of so-called “free” schools' benign effects in Sweden seemed hard to contradict. Recent rumblings that results there may be less rosy than billed have changed the mood a bit. The latest appeared on June 23rd in Research in Public Policy. Trawling through seven Swedish studies on education, Rebecca Allen of the Institute of Education identified one which claimed that the main beneficiaries of free schools were children from highly educated families. Their impact on pupils from humbler backgrounds and immigrant families was “close to zero”, it found.

Worrying, if true. But even if it is (and six studies reached rather different conclusions), would the same be true in England? Possibly not, Miss Allen thinks. In Sweden the lion's share of free schools were established in prosperous neighbourhoods. In England, which has a hefty fee-paying sector already, many of those who want to establish new schools are ambitious teachers working in poor areas.

Rachel Wolf runs the New Schools Network, a charity that advises would-be founders of schools. She says that, of the 700 groups who have contacted her already, half are made up of teachers keen to work with poor children. Many have come through “Teach First”, a programme that selects graduates from elite universities to spend two years teaching in some of the country's toughest schools. (A similar, earlier scheme in America also resulted in a host of new schools set up in poor areas by passionate and inspiring teachers.)

This is a pleasant surprise. It used to be relatively rich and pushy parents who were expected to demand new schools in England, not top-drawer teachers pulling up standards for children who lack middle-class clout. To help them, Mr Gove has learned another lesson from abroad: he wants to shake up planning rules so that new schools can be set up in places such as empty houses, disused shops and abandoned office blocks. Founders of new schools in Sweden and America have often used such premises; it cuts the cost of starting up tremendously.