UK: Swedish-style free schools may increase social divide - study

[alp227]

As the US struggles to disperse racial segregation in its public schools even decades after the iconic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case, a school plan in the UK has concerned its education secretary. From the wonderful British Guardian newspaper:

Swedish-style free schools may increase social divide - study

Plans to create hundreds of Swedish-style free schools in England will prove a costly experiment and risk increasing racial and social segregation as middle-class parents pull their children out of comprehensives, according to a major study.

The research by a leading academic also warned that the flagship Tory policy to transform the country's schools would bring little or no improvement in pupils' results but would lead to a "significant increase" in public spending.

Education secretary Michael Gove's academies bill, which is being pushed through parliament this week, will enable a radical overhaul of England's schools, giving every school the chance to convert to an academy and giving parents the right to create free schools outside the control of local councils. The Tories claim the new schools will drive up standards.

But a leading academic at the Institute of Education, part of the University of London, found that even in Sweden — one of the world's most egalitarian countries — free schools increased segregation. The schools are predominantly based in rich, urban areas and middle-class parents take their children out of community schools to attend them, Dr Susanne Wiborg found.

Hmm, don't conservatives say that Swedish-style health care leads to rationing, too?

[lurky]

1. "Free schools" = Charter schools

Not public schools as we know them.

[txlibdem]

2. Yeah, that threw me too until I read the link

Free as in free from educational control by the local school board.

The most telling thing: By graduation there is no difference in student achievement and no difference in the number of kids who go on to college.

Just another right winger money grab to remove funds from taxpayers and put it into the hands of the wealthy and big business. Nothing changes.

[mzteris]

3. charter schools ARE public schools. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

4. they're private schools funded with tax dollars.

[Hannah Bell]

5. swedish-style health care isn't what it once was. privatizing "reform" began in the 1990's.