Variety in the modes of education is a good thing: not every pupil is effectively educated in a public school.
But, I can’t help but think this is merely stealth privatisation of education: a profit making exercise. That it might actually have positive outcomes for pupils is a happy accident.
The article points out that a large number of schools in the UK are charter schools (40% primary, 80% secondary), but doesn’t then say if that is a positive or not.
One size doesn’t fit all in education, which Seymour points out. But how do charter schools address this issue?
One size doesn’t fit all. That’s why all kids should have an hour of reading, an hour of writing, and an hour of maths every day (which takes up like 70% of the learning time available).
I’m all for innovation in education, but surely there is plenty of international data to give just a little bit of information on the positives of charter schools.
I nice comparative analysis would go a long way, but no.
It’s probably pretty difficult to measure the performance of charter schools vs public schools.
A charter school might specifically cater to underachieving kids, kids for whom the public system didn’t work well. Then by selection the public schools will outperform the charter school.
Or alternatively, a charter school might outperform public school because the class sizes can be smaller and they don’t have to stick to the government set rules for schools. If you set dumb rules (like three hours a day on the three Rs) then you can then point to the charter schools and say “look, they are doing better than the public schools so we should convert more schools to charter schools” when in reality it’s just a sign the way you run public schools is wrong.
I’m starting to wonder if this is a chance for school boards/principles to get away from ‘the MoE overreach’ and constant curriculum alterations…
I can see how it would be tempting to be given funds and get back to teaching how they think is the best way to do it (rightly or wrongly!).
Maybe.
But it could also just be a cynical power grab, trying to force for profit education into the system.
