Reform think-tank pulls no punches on the Coalition's scorecard for education reform to date

The Spectator are carrying an interesting and provocative piece by Dale Bassett, Reform's research director and resident education policy guru. In it he assesses how radical and effective the Coalition Government has been in taking forward education policy reform.

One of his key criticisms is that the Coalition Government's reform strategy suffers from an intrinsic contractiction of trying to promote greater autonomy and diversity in provision at the frontline level, while maintaining key features of central and local bueraucratic control:

"Despite a reduction in bureaucracy and an increase in teachers’ autonomy, the fundamental assumption that government can and should drive improvement in the quality of teaching continues to underpin the system".

This he argues militates against the Coalition Government's vision of a much more flexible, demand-led education system where new providers are encouraged to replace failing schools and colleges.

He is also concerned that the flagship free schools agenda will fail to achieve sufficient scale to have any systemic or transformative impact on standards if the Government continue to restrict sponsors to not-for-profit groups of parents, teachers and charities, and argues that:

"Profit-making companies should be allowed to inject their expertise and capital into the system to significantly increase the number of new schools. The profit motive is also a useful incentive to encourage good schools to expand".

Dale Bassett's article follows hot on the heels of the Reform think-tank's recent publication of a scorecard report analysing the Coalition's record to date across a range of different public service areas.

In it the authors argued that:

"viewed as a whole, the Government’s public service reform policies are all over the place. The Government’s failure to adhere consistently to its principles gives an air of unreality to the whole programme".

In specific relation to the reform of the education system, the report pulled no punches giving the Education Department straight D grades (on an A-E index) for overall effectiveness, accountability, flexibility and value for money.