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Press Release

Free Schools

18 June 2010

Commenting on the government's plans to set up Free Schools, Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, the largest teachers' union said;

"The government's commitment to 'free schools' will create chaos at local level. Groups setting up their own schools irrespective of local planning needs would be a retrograde step that will lead to planning gridlock and social division.

"Michael Gove has said that Sweden's free schools have broken 'the bureaucratic stranglehold', and that, far from 'driving segregation, these schools have driven up standards for all'. Yet the National Agency for Education (NAE) in Sweden points to a system that shows, 'fairly unambiguously, that segregation has increased'.

"The NAE has found that free schools have higher results on average than municipal (state) schools, but the Agency says a significant factor for parents who opt for free schools is 'choosing a particular desirable social context'. In other words, free schools are a magnet for the middle class. Results reflect the differing social composition of both types of school.

"Despite reassurances from Michael Gove that reforms based on the Swedish system of 'free' schools would not be run for profit, there is the strong possibility under this system that governing bodies could increasingly contract out the running of schools to private companies in return for management fees. Adopting such a business model to our schools will amount to the sweeping dismantling of our education system, turning it over to unaccountable, unelected companies. There should be no place within education for private companies to profit. These profits can only be made at the expense of funding and investment in children's education.

"Not only that, the Conservatives' 'free schools' project would be a fundamental waste of money at a time of proposed serious cuts when schools will need every penny they can get. Waste will be created by the unnecessary and expensive addition of unwanted school places, just to suit the Conservative Party's ideological commitment to the introduction of a chaotic marketplace."



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National Union of Teachers

National Union of Teachers

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