20th June 2012 12:35
By Blue Tutors
Free Schools Could be Run for Profit
In an article on the BBC Education page today (31/05/2012) Sean Coughlan reports that the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has not ruled out allowing Free Schools to be run for profit. Mr Gove told the Leveson Inquiry on Tuesday that he had an "open mind" on such profit making in the future. When he was further pressed whether it would be desirable to generate a profit, Mr Gove said: "There are some of my colleagues in the coalition who are very sceptical of the benefits of profit. I have an open mind."
While shadow Education Minister, Stephen Twigg, argued that such a change "risks the abuse of public resources", I wonder if allowing profit-making would mean a real strive to improve the value of the school which would necessarily lead to improvement in performance for without good grades a school’s value is lessened. While the principle may be repellant to many, the results may not be.
Mr Twigg says "I don't believe that the profit-making motive is what will improve educational outcomes in schools in our country.
"If there is an operating surplus, that should be invested back into educating our children rather than paying a dividend to shareholders." I understand his point but think that anything that improves performance must be worth thinking about and perhaps exploring, even on a smaller scale.