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Maybe it is because free schools have been making the news because of the Birmingham developments and the row between Michael Gove and Theresa May but the blue team will be disappointed by the response to this key policy area in today’s YouGov.
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http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100276173/the-trojan-horse-scandal-is-an-argument-in-favour-of-giving-schools-more-autonomy-not-less/
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/austria-post-race-analysis.html
Mr. Dave, an excellent point but I wonder how well-known that is. I was under the impression they were free schools.
O/T
The outrage bus would explode if this was written in the UK
http://kickerdaily.com/racist-blog-about-filipino-infestation-in-singapore-provokes-outrage/#comment-16980
Tbh I think this taps in to a general distrust, lack of sense of ownership/control etc re private companies taking over state services. Going by polling on trust and the like.
Of course I'm going to be fixated on an area where the Tories are shedding votes as we've seen in the teacher specific surveys.
The biased BBC are quite happy to blur distinctions such as this (not limited to schools) to nudge their leftist mindset. You are not the only person to be given that false impression.
Reminds me of IDS the other day attacking the BBC for its coverage of welfare.
The oligarchs are getting fantastically more wealthy while everyone else gets poorer because they bought the political class.
The two main factors are
1: Mass immigration is a wealth transfer mechanism. On top of the general effect from driving down wages (whether in real or actual terms) if you have mass immigration at whatever level is necessary to keep wages static during a time of great productivity increases e.g. computing, then all the benefit of those productivity increases go to the rich.
Mass immigration is economic warfare.
2) Long list of ways the National Union of Banksters and Oligarchs has got the political class to rig the game in their favour e.g.
a) allowing profits to be offshored
b) ignoring cartels
c) allowing tbtf banks
etc
"Regulatory capture" aka a corrupted political class. That's the problem.
The consumer is the priority in all of this - the child particularly as well as the parents. Knee-jerk hostility to change from random people polled on the street will fade away when good outcomes become apparent.
I don't know how much it will effect things though as faith in state schools is patchy as well. To hurt Con this policy has to find people who were originally pro (ish) to free schools and became anti later. Not sure how many that could be.
I'd have thought it was quite polarized already which would mean it's already baked in (but I haven't followed the polling at all so that's a pure guess).
Over here, it's a tempting idea for all sorts of religious extremists to lock on to.
I fervently hope that free schools are consigned to the dustbin of history very soon and I'm very happy that 53% of my countrymen seem to agree.
There is clear evidence that people who haven't got certain paperwork that the unions insist on for closed-shop purposes are quite able to inspire and educate the next generation.
That element of the policy is no more than an extra side-bonus of the free schools system though. Breaking the control of unions and the dead hand of local "government" is always a great thing.
8 million school children, approx 12million parents involved = about 8 million votes.
Now why would one small producer interest shift a GE?
The big problem in education at the moment isn't the issue of free schools, it's the provision of school places themselves. One County Council in the south for whom I do some work has to find an additional 900 places for this autumn's intake - I found about this at the end of last month.
That's a huge task which I understand is being repeated across much of the country. It's an issue around how quickly new classrooms can be added, how quickly local planning issues can be resolved and how quickly the rest of the school infrastructure (including the provision of meals) can be put in place.
New secondary schools are being built as are new primaries to take on this influx of children and the "free" schools have to fight for availability of land - there's a massive issue around land at the moment. Between the demands for additional school places and additional space for residential accommodation for the elderly on top of the Government requirement for building new homes the planning process in some areas is on the cusp of meltdown.
It's not just about the "i" word - there are other demographic and economic pressures at work which knock on to other areas such as the provision of medical and transport services.
But it's not as though we are actually short of land - there's masses of it but its usage for anything meaningful is blocked by antiquated concepts of "green belt" and the like but that blockage serves a purpose as well as the current infrastructure could not stand a house building free-for-all while the cynic in me suspects successive Governments have realised that keeping homeowners sweet by keeping the value of their capital asset high by manipulating supply and demand is the key to electoral success.
Like I say the number of people who fit in the bracket of anti enough the state system to be in favour of (or at least not anti) Free Schools but then leftie/nationalistic enough to be put off by the looting aspect (public paying taxes to build something and then that thing is sold off cheap afterwards) may not be that large.
dunno
nb my view on this has changed a little since a recent experience which at least on the surface seemed to boil down to a big company being given a lot of school buildings cheap.
In principle I'm not against free schools. It's just pretty much impossible to get hard data on them (the DfE fight to the death) and a lot of info that comes out is spun - such as re 'parent choice', which doesn't tell you if first choice (down to no choice) or not.
I think the bigger effect will be local - in areas where there's been forced academisation, for example (against parents' wishes and in spite of good performance), or where vested interest has caused controversy.
Yeah. This I why think the impact might be limited or rather already baked in because you need people who'd be okay with forced academisation if it was about individual heads being free of the LEAs but not so keen when it just looks like looting with a big chain taking the place of the LEA.
For public sector unions that is fairly well understood but it goes much further and my own experience of exactly the same was as a member, then youngest ever chairman of the local National Farmers' Union branch. ( A long time ago.) Add to that that the union nationally had an agenda distinct from the aspirations of my fellow local hill farmers and a hostility to Mrs Thatcher's rural policies which we did not share and my and their chances of becoming national delegates were distinctly limited.
Turning back to state education and condemnation of right of centre education secretaries is not unbeneficial to those aspiring to rise in the union ranks. Some saw this danger, Gillian Shepherd and even Ken Baker finessed around it. Michael Gove is a more simple ( but not simplistic ) man and he goes straight forward to what he believes ( mainly correctly ) is right.
Result, a very honourable but sadly naive man is vilified throughout every school and he doesn't have the aplomb to deal with it at all. In many ways he is like the teacher who can't quite control the lower fifth - not totally aware there is a problem or that he is the main element of that problem. He is an easy target for jobbing trade union hacks just like the weak teacher is for the school yard wannabe thugs.
To come now to the crux of the article. Of course he won't lose the election for the Conservatives: not that many care about education. Andrew Lansley could have lost the election if he had been left in charge of health as the NHS and the BBC are the twin pillars upon which the post war UK settlement stands.
In excess of 90% of the UK will have no experience of Free Schools. Many will have met the Labour academies in the inner cities where they replaced appalling county council schools. All my local post 11 schools are the new 2010 academies and even those with childen attending the same are barely aware of any change other than in the description. How many actually knew what Comprehensive meant in a school's title ?
So to summarise the teaching staff hate Michael Gove, in part because they have been told to but also because Conservative policies and Conservatives are to most of them an anathema associated with Public Schools. The public in general and parents more acutely have a vague view that state education has improved out of all recognition over the last generation - and they are right. They and I don't know the detail, they have heard something about free schools, they are mildly aware the left don't like them. But then they believe Dave Spart doesn't like any progress. So, education, unlike the health service is not a problem for the re-election of a Conservative goverment, even with Latin Master Gove as head of department.
CF the argument - if you don't support the NFU politicians will never allow shooting of badgers.
Don't know the complete list of schools, but what I've read so far regarding 'Trojan Horse' is that they were Academies and State schools.
What is remarkable is that for a politician, Gove has seriously screwed up the politics. The teachers were on his side!
However the natural end result of free market capitalism *isn't* free markets, it's cartels i.e. the end result of free market competition isn't free market competition.
So *continuing* free market competition *requires* the state to constantly break up cartels as they form.
Hence the point about regulatory capture.
It's a capitalist argument. It just sounds socialist because a lot of the free market people have never actually thought about the mechanics of why free markets work better.
BUT I'm strongly opposed to the existence, let alone the extension of faith schools. Divisive, and likely to encourage division.
What's more I really dislike the idea of "free schools". Parents come and go; schools go on for ever. I recall it being suggested that I become a parent governor once. Of a secondary school. My youngest was about half-way up the school at the time. It would have meant that before the time my stint was finished he'd have left. Seems daft to me.
There's another aspect to Free Schools in the leafier parts of London (lefty or otherwise) which is people wanting a lifeboat to keep their kids out of the state system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWgtpJkDpeY
I met public sector staff under the previous government who voted Tory in the belief that a Tory government would interfere less in their daily work - let professionals be professionals and all that. That hasn't been their experience under Gove with his micromanagement down to the level of whether a particular book should be taught. (By contrast, it's not been particularly a complaint about Tory health ministers - privatisation, limited funding, but not micromanagement.)
Detectives investigating the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 three months ago discover new evidence which has renewed suspicions about its pilot"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/malaysia/10917868/MH370-captain-plotted-route-to-southern-Indian-Ocean-on-home-simulator.html
Historically, all schools were free schools until the tories nationalised them in the run up to world war one so they could impose drill practice on the young cannon fodder. (the C of E owned most beforehand and refused to allow this). Since then the left has gradually taken over and turned many into socialist indoctrination factories. It is the threat to these socialist indoctrination factories that excites the anti Govers.
So in principle I'm in favour of free schools, in practice its probably more complex, particularly in rural areas.
As the former party leader Sir Menzies Campbell said the Lib Dems would need to rebuild "from the bottom up" after losing all but one of their MEPs, Lord Storey said Clegg has become an unpopular figure in his home city."
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/22/nick-clegg-toxic-on-doorstep-nice-guy-lord-storey
*Posted from the lawless border region of Potters Bar*
That said I don't think anyone sensible would want the end of the NHS and to have to pay for schools. It would also result in the collapse of the birthrate which would endanger the economy even further within a generation.
I also note that low tax conservative voting types in Somerset were all too keen for the state to intervene with state aid during the recent floods. A low tax government might just shrug their shoulders and tell them to sort their own problems out. These things work both ways.
What I fear is that the NHS and state schools will be slowly throttled so that while they technically exist, no one other than the desperate would use them. Similarly benefits will be eroded by inflation over the next 20 years to become worthless and we will swing from one extreme end of the spectrum to the other.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/22/jean-claude-juncker-britain-eu
Gove's policy of developing a much more diverse marketplace in the provision of education is entirely right. Where he has failed is in not having the courage of his convictions and letting them do their own thing. Providing that there's sufficient information available to local parents and press about how schools perform, market pressures will deliver the rest. Parents are well aware of what 'good' schools are and schools will respond to that demand.
The reality is that the EPP can only get their candidate because the Socialists will back him - a Grand Coalition against the anti-Euro and anti-EU insurgents on the far-left and -right. In a PR parliament, there's often more to be said for being a swing vote outside a group (or Coalition) than an outvoted minority within one. The Socialists won't always back the EPP and they would do well to keep the ECR relatively sweet.
As I said, poor standards in the shambles that existed earlier.
A BBC documentary to be screened on Monday will reveal South Yorkshire Police spent £500,000 to control an EDL protest against a planned mosque - that turned out to be a KFC.
The programme 'Police Under Pressure' documents how false rumours a pub was to be turned into a mosque sparked the demonstration between Page Hall and Parson Cross in Sheffield.
Around 1200 extra officers from 15 different forces had to be called upon, hitting the already cash-strapped force with the massive bill.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/06/22/edl-march-mosque-kfc-police-_n_5519324.html?1403449342
Yet our school went Academy 2 years ago and has gone from strength to strength improving its Ofsted rating by 2 levels.
The people who don't like these schools always seem to be people who don't send their kids to one. Or teachers who see their cosy supply side nonsense under threat.
Labour are more and more coming across as a bunch of londoncentric slightly odd navel gazers unaware of what happens beyond the M25.
This email aware UKIP supporter is really beginning to wonder if labour are deliberately trying to lose the next election. To be fair I can't say I blame them, given whats in store for us economically in a year or two when the chickens come home to roost.
I think people thinking London is a wonderful place to live in is a good example of mass delusion. It is for a few wealthy people who can afford to live in the centre with a weekend retreat in the country, but most of it is an overcrowded, over developed hole.
Long past my bedtime so will hit the series link on the Tivo box
Incidentally, every one of my GP friends heads sank at Milibands 48 hour pledge for appointments. More arbitrary targets to be met by putting something else on the back burner. No wonder the East Midlands GP scheme has 38% vacancies unfilled in the training scheme.
However there are schools across the country that are failing, many of which were once flagship examples of an altogether different vintage of government policy. Building Schools for the Future (BSF) began in 2005, and coincided with an enthusiastic revival in progressive education during the New Labour years. These were the heady days of personalisation, independent learning, multiple intelligences, SEAL, learning styles, 21st century skills and thinking hats. Many new BSF schools were built at extravagant costs to fulfil such a vision."
http://goodbyemisterhunter.wordpress.com/2014/05/07/they-were-the-future-once/
Hmmn.
I wonder what this year's PISA results will tell us. How will state-run Wales fare against academy England??
It would be interesting if Free school academy England started to shake itself out of the educational torpor that has afflicted the country since Labour took over (Labour Wales has already told people not to expect any improvement).
This must rank as one of the most unsurprising stories of the day
http://www.theweek.co.uk/uk-news/59086/tony-blair-accused-of-lies-over-syrian-wmds?
I assumed that was the main driver for Free Schools and why I didn't care much either way as 50-60 DIY private schools for cash-poor posh people in London wasn't going to matter much.
The Ukip wild card and the B;ack Swan of this flood of (pick one) [hot oligarch money or righteous international investment] has made it look iffy.
It seems to me that the clearest evidence against his proposition that UKIP voters are less technologically advanced than other voters is the fact that, as has often been pointed out on PB, UKIP seems to get better poll ratings in the online polls than in the old fashioned phone polls. Surely this indicates that UKIP supporters are more, rather than less, au fait with email and browsing the internet than the average voter?
I suspect Labours internal polling them is spooking them, as their 35% strategy won't work if a chunk of their core goes all Farage.
Mr Umanna ought to perhaps adhere to the adage "Do not feed the troll"
The teaching vote has always been Labour. Moreover it's been a blind adherence. Teachers really should be able to account for themselves in a better way.