Continuing on from my earlier post looking at Swedish companies investing in UK education. The UK Education Minister bottled his decision for operating schools like a business but the parents of the local area rallied:
The Breckland parents wanted a new school – there is only one within a 10-mile radius of the proposed site – but felt unable to run it themselves. So they sought bids from providers all over the world, and were most impressed by IES. Understandably so: its chain is world-class, perhaps the closest Sweden has to England’s private schools. Its pupils were being entered for the International GCSE at a time when that exam was deemed too tough for English state school pupils. IES is a commercial company, and bid for the Breckland contract on the basis that it would be able to make a profit.
It is odd that the idea of for-profit education should have taken off in Sweden, which is usually seen as the most socialistic country in Europe. It happened in 1992, when the country’s Conservatives won the general election and passed a piece of legislation that even ministers thought would achieve little. The offer was this: the government would pay a fixed sum per pupil, and schools could open if they attracted enough children. When the bill passed through the Swedish parliament, it was eclipsed by a row about girls being denied carpentry lessons. No one imagined that ordinary people would have the resources, or inclination, to set up schools.
But a new breed of entrepreneurs emerged. One was a teacher named Barbara Bergstrom, who, with a partner, set up her own school in Stockholm. They did it on a shoestring, buying secondhand furniture and doing the cleaning themselves. The school offered a disciplinarian ethos (rare, at the time) and an international outlook. It was an attractive mix, word travelled, and it was oversubscribed. But there was a problem: Bergstrom believed in the profit motive, while her partner did not. They split. Today, the original school, Engelska Skolan Norr, is run by her former partner as a lone enterprise. Bergstrom’s IES chain, meanwhile, has 20 schools with 11,200 pupils and a waiting list of 50,000. This is the difference which the profit principle makes, when matched by a true entrepreneur.
Stunning difference in results. It is something the whole of Sweden has learned well:
In Sweden, all parties – apart from the former communists – now accept the principle. The profit motive is seen as the surest guarantor of social justice, ensuring new schools reach the neighbourhoods that need them most. In the last Swedish elections, the social democrats ran on the slogan “pupils should choose schools, not vice versa”. The idea of parents having the world’s best providers at their disposal is – to Swedes – the correct order of things. Yet in Britain, the cradle of capitalism, parents are almost powerless. Some resort to renting second houses in good catchment areas, others fake religious affiliation. Profit remains a dirty word and one which even a Tory Education Secretary dares not utter.
Let’s hope that Hekia Parata and John banks are not so timid.
