| The Privatisation of Education One
of the issues touched upon in the article in this number with the title ‘The Illusion
of Choice’ is that of the creeping privatisation of education in this country.
Tony Blair, Alan Milburn, Charles Clarke and John Reid all seem to believe that
it matters little who actually delivers education and health, provided
there is some evidence of efficiency and economic savings. Yet, quite apart from
concerns regarding the erosion of the public service ethos, it hardly seems axiomatic
that the involvement of the private sector does mean success, efficiency
and public approval. And we surely have a right to be concerned about some of
the individuals and companies who benefit from the Government’s patronage and
largesse. At the beginning of October 2004, it was confirmed that Britain’s
biggest out-sourcing company, Capita, had been awarded a £177m five-year contract
– the largest in education so far – to manage the Government’s twin strategies
for improving standards of reading and writing in the country’s primary and secondary
schools. In a story carried by The Guardian with the heading ‘Capita’s
school deal under fire’ (2 October 2004), the Department for Education and Skills
said that, in assuming complete responsibility for the national primary and Key
Stage 3 strategies from April 2005, Capita Strategic Education Services would
be expected to help ministers hit their targets for literacy and numeracy. (It
is interesting to note that primary schools have still not met the levels
promised for 2002, an issue on which both David Blunkett and Estelle Morris said
they would resign as Education Secretary). The new contract will involve hiring
thousands of reading and maths consultants to ‘advise’ schools and local education
authorities on how to deal with ‘under-achieving pupils’ and how to raise the
test scores at ages 11 and 14. Capita itself has been blamed for the botched
introduction of the Criminal Records Bureau – which caused the system for checking
the background of new teachers and other staff working with children to break
down in the Autumn of 2002 – and for the problematic administration of London’s
congestion charge in its early days. And the Government seems intent on contracting
work out to private sector firms like Capita while the DfES is busy shedding thousands
of civil servants’ jobs. Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat education spokesperson,
has said that the award of the new contract also poses issues about conflicts
of interest, since Capita is understood to be in the frame as a potential sponsor
of a new city academy. Which brings us neatly to what is probably the most
controversial policy in the Government’s recently-published Five-Year Strategy
for Children and Learners: the proposed rapid expansion of the city academy
programme. It is intended that the number of such academies – 17 in September
2004 – will have increased to 200 by the year 2010. This is, of course, all part
of New Labour’s project for enhancing choice, diversity and customer satisfaction
in the secondary sector. Writing in The Guardian on the 9 July 2004,
Francis Beckett pointed out that the Government’s new big idea for education in
the form of the city academy has turned out to be the one that the Conservatives
invented 18 years ago and then abandoned as a failure shortly afterwards. It is
even run by the same man: Cyril Taylor, the entrepreneur appointed by the Thatcher
Government in 1986 to create 30 City Technology Colleges. New Labour has
not made the Conservatives’ mistake of asking for too much money from the schools’
putative sponsors, settling on a figure of around £2m. For this relatively small
sum of money, less than a fifth of the initial cost, the business virtually owns
the school and acquires the right to put its name and logo on the signboard at
the school entrance. It can decide which specialism the school chooses to adopt,
and, within the increasingly flexible timetable imposed by the National Curriculum,
which subjects are to be taught to older students. It can even impose a particular
ideological slant on aspects of the teaching. In the schools controlled
by Sir Peter Vardy, an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism, Darwinism
is taught not as a science, but as just one theory (undoubtedly
misguided) of the way the world came into being. It was reported in The Times
on the 24 July 2004 that this ‘millionaire’ car dealer had arranged for a document
entitled Christianity and Curriculum to be available on the website of
Emmanuel College in Gateshead which suggested, among other things, that Britain
could have been saved from an invasion by Adolf Hitler in the Second World War
by an act of God. This document emphasised the importance of using ‘a frame of
reference in which God is sovereign’ when teaching history, going on to say that:
‘in this context, it becomes important to consider why Hitler paused at the English
Channel in 1940 before embarking on an invasion of Britain. Could it be that God
was calling a halt to this march of evil?’ Sir Peter Vardy was one of the
affluent individuals featured in a front-page article in The Independent
of the 8 July 2004 headed: ‘Should these people be running state schools?’ Others
included: Graham Able, the headteacher of Dulwich College in south London, charging
fees of up to £20,000 a year; Sir Frank Lowe, the agent for such leading sports
stars as Anna Kournikova, Mark Philippousis and Gareth Southgate; and Peter Sutherland,
Head of the global investment bank Goldman Sachs. All these individuals seem likely
to be running one or more city academies by the end of the decade. The question
posed by The Independent surely deserves an answer; though it is difficult
to see how the Government’s policy can be described as anything other than indefensible. Clyde
Chitty | 
