[Hebdomad]

This idea has a worrying precedent. Since British universities started to depend on student admission and graduation for their funding, universities have had to decrease their entry and graduation requirements. This has an awful effect on pre-university schools: because pre-university schools have "succeeded" when one of their students reaches and graduates from university, schools have no incentive to improve; according to such quantitative criteria, they're already performing adequately.

These same lowering of standards could happen to these new schools. What parent is going to send their child to a school which has a notoriously stingy grading reputation (for coursework)? The resultant lower grades would lessen their child's future prospects. I can't see any schools who proposes to teach Latin fairing well, either. Basically, when these new schools advertise you'd have to know for sure what they mean when they talk about their students' success rates: "we have excellent teachers" and not "we're very lenient." (hopefully the parents wouldn't be attracted to the latter..) The government would have to have an iron grip on the curriculum and marking criteria (I'm not sure how much leeway teachers get now, to be honest). Of course, this is quite possible, and why I'm not opposed to the scheme.

Similar to the current British university system, I'd worry that these new schools would care more about numbers than anything else. For example, these new schools would obviously have to attract a certain number of students to cover their school's rent, electricity, etc. This would become even worse if the schools were for profit. However, if the government's grants per student were large enough to mitigate this, and the schools weren't for profit, then the school could concentrate on teaching and not whether they're attracting enough students. If the grants were large enough, this scheme may even reduce class sizes, which would be a huge boon to students.

Basically, if regulated well, market economics may very well help the education system.

But do you know what I really love about this scheme? It's the fact that the Tories, traditionally seen as uncaring, have taken advise from a socialist country, which clearly has the best education system, when the Labour party, divided and unable to rule, can't even understand how they're destroying our children's future. They're destroying their own party and destroying the country. I can only pray the Tories get into power and fix this broken society.

(there's another post about cultural emphases on education, and how think tanks and university's should concentrate on those who use a system and not just the system itself for evaluation, but meh)