January 4, 2005
TRANSFORMERS:
Private takeover 'transforms' Walsall schools (Anna Bawden, January 4, 2005, Guardian Unlimited)
A company in Walsall run by the private sector education provider Serco has dramatically improved schooling in the area, according to official inspectors.The Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted) found that the local education authority's performance - once one of the worst in the country - had become "highly satisfactory" since the LEA's functions were outsourced to Education Walsall.
Inspectors praised the company's strategy for improving education, the emerging strength in special educational needs provision and the promotion of social inclusion.
The report also singled out the progress in improving relations with the schools themselves. "The trust, support and confidence of schools have been fully restored as a result of good leadership by senior officers," it stated.
The findings are likely to mirror the results of a study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the Confederation of British Industry, published tomorrow to coincide with the North of England Education Conference. It is expected to show that intervention in failing LEAs by private companies often turns around performance.
When the history books are written, folks will wonder how the Tories lost such commonsensical issues to Tony Blair and Bill Clinton to the GOP. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 4, 2005 12:01 PM
Pinch of salt.
PwC have made a lot of money advising on PFI contracts so they're not exactly an unbiased source.
Posted by: Ali Choudhury at January 4, 2005 12:28 PMSubcontracting out public education like this, or like charter schools in the U.S., is just passing the buck to another monopoly; this passes for "innovation" in OJ's idealized Third Way Land, but it's really just another one-size-fits-all crapshoot. The successes of this approach will be brayed to the heavens, the dismal failures, ignored, while vouchers remain a nutty untried idea.
Posted by: JimGooding at January 4, 2005 12:44 PMand while he dismissed all the experimwentation and reform going on around him the reformation took place around him...
Posted by: oj at January 4, 2005 12:54 PMThey've been reforming here in Detroit for forty years. All reformations lead to unitarianism with the goal being constant reforming. The secular educational system is just publically funded unitarianism. It must be overthrown, not mildly modified in one milktoast way or another.
Posted by: JimGooding at January 4, 2005 1:10 PMYes, the ruination took forty years--the redemption will take longer.
Posted by: oj at January 4, 2005 1:12 PMOnly if the redemption is run by the government!
Posted by: JimGooding at January 4, 2005 1:37 PMWho do you think is going to issue the vouchers?
Posted by: oj at January 4, 2005 1:46 PMThe same folks, more or less, who issue tax returns with equal control over how or where the money is spent.
Posted by: JimGooding at January 4, 2005 1:49 PMYes, so your radical revolution is just a government program.
Posted by: oj at January 4, 2005 1:52 PMAbout as much as the Reagan Revolution.
Posted by: JimGooding at January 4, 2005 1:54 PMExactly.
Posted by: oj at January 4, 2005 2:07 PMJim's right. Private monopoly takes the place of public monopoly under the guise of open competition.
Posted by: Ali Choudhury at January 4, 2005 2:56 PM