Teacher Nigel Watson argues that there is a very real bias towards Keynesian ideas in our schools, and that it is doing harm to children's education.
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System-wide studies of the impact of profit on educational outcomes are now beginning to emerge, says James Croft. These imply that there is no argument against profit-making in education.
According to Anthony Seldon, head of Wellington College, Berkshire, fee-paying private schools have a “moral duty” to help run failing government schools in deprived areas. However, says James Stanfield, private schools are right to question the wisdom of this approach.
The "public benefit test" is a misguided attempt to force consolidation in the independent education market, argues James Croft.
The government’s failure to stimulate free school supply has major implications for its overall programme of market expansion, argues James Croft.
In this groundbreaking report, James Croft argues that the crisis of school places can only be met by giving true freedom to Free Schools and allowing profit-making schools to operate within the Free Schools programme. In his study of profit-making school outcomes, he shows that schools charging fees on a par with the average state expenditure per pupil equal or exceed the performance of average independent schools. As the report shows, unlocking the power of profit within the Free Schools programme would be a revolution in schooling in England.
In this think piece, Anton Howes argues that the Browne Review offers the strongest option for reforming universities funding. The article argues that removing the cap on fees combined with a modification of the Review's proposals for repayments would give students more choice and more control over their education, and improve access to higher level education for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
In a this article, Philip Salter argues that private funding is vital for translating scientific research into economic growth and that inefficient government funding is displacing more effective private funding.
In The Broken University, education expert James Stanfield examines what is seen and what is not seen in the UK higher education sector. In contrast to the conventional wisdom, he finds no compelling evidence to suggest that public subsidies to higher education have any economic benefit. Moreover, Stanfield convincingly argues that once its hidden costs and unintended consequences are taken into account, government intervention in higher education is doing far more harm than good, and is holding back the development of one of the UK’s most important service sectors.
Dr Terence Kealey highlights the reasons as to why American universitites are superior to ours, and other economically advantaged nations. He states that the aim of all universities must be to move away from state dependence to independence, with there being an urgent need for their endowments to be restored to assist in this move.
The best universities in the world are independent, but in the UK we've made the mistake of allowing governments to fund - and therefore control - the universities directly. The Higher Education Funding Councils should be abolished, and the universities should be freed of state control. The HEFCs' funds should be transfered to needs blind funding agencies to allow students, regardless of background, to access higher education on the grounds solely of merit.
The Adam Smith Institute is the UK’s leading libertarian think tank...
