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Education think pieces
Helping the public to go private Print E-mail
Written by Dr Madsen Pirie   
Sunday, 26 September 2004
Independent schools are too expensive for most people; they provide a service that is bought by only seven per cent of the population. Yet polls have shown repeatedly that most of us would like to send our children to an independent school if only we could afford it.

One of the reasons for their high cost derives, paradoxically, from their charitable status. If they were profit-making companies that distributed their profits to shareholders, there would be incentives for them to keep costs down and operate efficiently. They would try to sustain dividends and share values by seeking savings.
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Do we need a Department for Education and Skills? Print E-mail
Written by Stuart Sexton   


When the Conservatives took office in 1979 we had an instruction from Prime Minister Thatcher that we, at the Department of Education, as it was then known, should issue no more that one Circular (to educational establishments) per year. I was the Special Advisor to the Secretary of State, having formulated much of the education policy of the previous years in Opposition. We pursued such policies as the Assisted Places Scheme, Local Management of Schools, and latterly, Grant Maintained Schools.
 

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Our over-centralized schools Print E-mail

State education suffers from too much control from the centre. Teachers are snowed under by paperwork, and dismayed at being told how to do their jobs by ministers and officials. All of the major - and many of the minor - operational and spending decisions are made by county and national bureaucrats who are distant from life in the classroom and the real needs of children and parents.
 

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Education

Introduction
Education blogs
Education think pieces
Education publications

Words of wisdom

"The discipine of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters."

The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch I, Part III

 

"The endowments of schools and colleges have necessarily diminished more or less the necessity of application in the teachers. Their subsistence [is] altogether independent of their success and reputation in their particular professions."

The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Ch I, Part III


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