Free Schools

I apologise for not posting for a few days, but I was engaged in other activities. Someone kindly told me how they liked my blog and asked me for my opinion on the policy of free schools, and I will address that if you will indulge me. However, when thinking about the subject of free schools, I thought how a topic like this goes to the heart of the deep seated problems that bedevil our nation. As a result, this will lead me on to what may be a series of posts on an on-going train of thought. Should anyone find this tedious or wishes me to take up other topics, then please tell me. Also, as I keep saying, if you feel I am talking rubbish then please contact me and tell me why. I genuinely welcome such input.

Free schools are another example of neoliberal free market thinking that have a superficial attraction but turn to dust with even a passing examination. The point about free schools is that they are not free, they are funded by the taxpayer and give guaranteed priority to the offspring of the people who run them. Thus, there is a big element of exclusivity about them. In true neoliberal fashion the free part of these schools is that they are free from local authority control. They are thus fundamentally undemocratic, as education is a local authority function and the neoliberals wish to completely bypass local authorities so that they can withdraw as much local authority finance as possible. They wish to take schools out of local authority control altogether as they did with further education colleges, and look at what they have become. They are run by neoliberal managers who remove all full time permanent staff and replace them with part-time, temporary staff on zero-hour contracts and remove as much education as possible and replace it with training that makes them a profit.

The point about free schools is that they are largely unregulated. Oh they are still subject to inspection and are obliged to offer a general curriculum, but they are free to employ unqualified and untrained teachers, set their own wage rates and conditions of service and teach a very ideological syllabus that, at times, resembles a form of brainwashing. In addition, they are selective. Anyone is theoretically free to attend a free school, but the school is equally free to refuse them.

The whole point of the matter is that you must never allow for a market in education. In any market there are winners and losers, and, if you don't have money then you cannot enter the market. This has nothing to do with equality as the neoliberal accuses, but is all about equity. A free market allows for privilege, for queue jumping, for exclusion. It allows the wealthy to make benefits at the expense of the less well off. Paradoxically, one of the earliest advocates of public education for all children, paid for out of general taxation, was Adam Smith, the so-called father of the free market, which of course he was no such thing.

Free schools are a manifestation of the free market neoliberal's hatred of the state, of their hatred of all things collective and their dedication to the concept of the individual consumer who must be free to make their own choices to spend their money as they see fit. The problem with the neoliberal concept of individualism is that not only does it not exist, but it cannot exist. If there is one thing that Adam Smith was definitive about it was the social nature of the human being, not their individualism. This is why I continually stress that the free market is a fraud because its fundamental assumptions are all wrong. I will expand on these themes if you allow.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat