Does parental choice really improve education?

Over the years of my working life I have gained quite a lot of experience of education. I have taught in well-resourced independent schools but also been on the governing board of two maintained schools. One of these was a primary school in an affluent area of the town. The other was a middle school in the most deprived area of the town and where over a quarter of pupils were eligible for free school meals. For a while I was chair of governors of this school.

Not surprisingly the primary school was more successful and was rated good with many areas outstanding at a recent Ofsted inspection whereas the middle school was given notice to improve. This decision did not come as a surprise to the governors or leadership of the school.

Plans are well established for a free school to be set up in the area in which the middle school was and one of the more active parent governors resigned to join the group involved with the planned new free school.

To be really successful any school needs:

• high quality teachers
• good leadership
• adequate resources
• supportive parents who are really engaged in the education of their children

When a school is not doing well it requires support. I had first hand experience of this from the school improvement services of the local authority. Even at a time when budgets are so obviously under pressure considerable and vital support was available.

In an area where a free school is set up it is highly likely that the parents that will be interested are just the ones that all schools need. We obviously would like all parents to be actively involved in the education of their children but, in the real world, this won’t happen. When a free school opens in an area this will mean that other schools have less than their quota of highly engaged parents and suffer as a result.

At the moment it seems to taken for granted in some circles that increasing parental choice is, by definition, a good thing. I would like to examine this. Can there ever really be choice for ALL parents? The free school concept is a good example of this. Clearly parents do have more schools to choose from in this situation. This cannot mean that all will get their first choice and if the quality of education for the less fortunate declines as a result of setting up the free school. If we want genuine choice for all there has to be a surplus of school places and this would be rather expensive in terms of resources.

I welcomed the opportunity to be involved with a school which was struggling and would like to see far more attention being given to improving standards in schools like this rather than putting such a high proportion of limited resources into the setting up of a free school which will benefit just a small proportion of children in its area.