|
In Britain the public (that is, non-private) comprehensive schools have traditionally been run by local councils. And the job they were doing in many deprived, inner-city areas was woeful. Tony Blair decided to step in and hand the job over to someone else.
Initially the Labor Government’s focus was on using the private sector to raise standards with the Government effectively forcing outsourcing on local authorities. In 1997 it launched Education Action Zones, which were intended to involve a range of organisations in raising educational standards in socially deprived areas.2 Few zones succeeded in attracting the target of 250,000 pounds in private sector contributions needed to attract the maximum amount of public funding. One reason given is that businesses are reluctant to spend money in poor areas. The Government has now recognised that if viable and enduring education partnerships are to emerge, the private sector contribution will have to be viewed as an investment rather than charitable sponsorship.
In February this year the Blair Government announced that businesses, churches and charitable organisations would be able to take over struggling State schools, effectively spelling the demise of the bog standard comprehensive school. In effect, the Government was copying the controversial US innovation of charter schools; at its contract schools a sponsor would take responsibility for a fixed term with an agreed set of outcomes, an arrangement which could be described as the classic model for public-private partnerships.
The Government used as its model King's Manor, Guildford, which the local Conservative-run council had handed over to 3Es Enterprises, a company set up by Kingshurst City Technology College, Solihull, West Midlands.
Other, less ambitious, public private partnerships had previously been established between local education authorities and a wide range of companies, including Serco, KPMG, Capita, Vospers Thorny-croft, PwC, Symons Consulting and Deloitte & Touche. In Tower Hamlets, East London, the education authority is being treated as an operational unit of facilities management company Serco.3 Vospers Thornycroft and Symons Consulting are working with Hampshire local education authority to raise standards by employing head teachers as school improvers.
A key goal for the private sector is to achieve economies of scale. PwC, for example, is co-ordinating school improvement across three London local education authorities, including Kensington and Chelsea, scarcely an area of acute socioeconomic disadvantage. In March this year 3Es Enterprises saw its management extended to a number of other schools, with video and internet links used to counter teacher shortages and to allow minority subjects such as Latin to be taught at all schools. 
The guiding principle for all of this is value for money or Best Value, as laid down by the Labor Party in 1997. The Conservative Party has always had a natural predisposition towards the private sector. New Labour took the more pragmatic view that the key test is what works.4
PPPs are to be used where they are appropriate, not for doctrinal reasons. In the case of public education, the private sector has tended to become involved because nothing else was working - perhaps not surprisingly, when a senior local education officer reportedly described the 50-odd schools in his area as being: many excellent, some mediocre and a few poor in quality”.5 Why should any schools be mediocre or poor in quality? The private sector is much less likely to tolerate these sorts of outcomes.
Continue
|
