Toynbee: a few mistakes on Swedish schools
nick cowen, 9 April 2008
Via Tim Worstall, we learn that Polly Toynbee is falling out of love with the Swedish model just as the Tories are gaining interest in it. In the past, responses to a columnist’s claims could only be aired in a carefully guarded newspaper’s letters page. Now many online editions of columnist articles have comment facilities and the global nature of the Internet means that responses from around the world can be almost instantaneous with the original claims. The Local (which provides news about Sweden in English) has picked up on Toynbee’s article and has picked out a few inaccuracies. It is also worth looking briefly at her comments on the Swedish school reforms…
Toynbee explains the basics quite accurately:
Education is where Cameron draws most from Sweden. When last Swedish conservatives were in office, in the early 1990s, they allowed anyone to set up a “free” school, however small, and claim the state’s per capita allowance for pupils: voluntary and private for-profit schools opened, as well as Muslim and Christian schools.
This is essentially true. However, it is worth noting to begin with that it is by no means clear that Cameron is actually taking the main lessons of the Swedish school system to heart: non-selective school admissions, a standard transparent procedure for opening new schools and allowing plenty of competition between independent schools. Furthermore, religious schools make up a minority of Free Schools (only 13 per cent) while schools with distinctive pedagogies (including Steiner and Montessori) are rather more popular.
[T]his is not a programme the present Swedish conservative government is expanding; only about 10% of Swedish children attend “free” schools, and Reinfeldt’s ministers say their energy is directed to improving ordinary state schools.
This is mistaken. The greatest strength of Free Schools is they do not need a government initiative to expand, merely demand from families (and permission from the Sweden National Agency for Education through a standard application). The number of applications to open new schools continues to increase. However, she is correct in so far as that this does indeed allow government to concentrate on improving state schools. Free Schools give them a useful benchmark for which to aim (they perform better on average).
“Free” schools have proved socially divisive, attracting more middle-class families and ethnic minorities, many have restrictive academic admissions criteria, and there is intense unease over new segregated faith schools.
It is strange to claim that schools are socially divisive because they attract ethnic minorities and middle-class families at the same time. If we established schools like that in Britain, it would be a dramatic improvement! Toynbee also fails to mention that children with special educational needs are particular beneficiaries of Free Schools. There are, however, legitimate questions over segregation in Sweden, as it is true that ethnic Swedes of lower socio-economic background do not seem to be improving due to Free Schools at the moment (nor are they especially disadvantaged).
It is, however, simply erroneous to claim that Free schools have academic admissions criteria of any sort: they are not allowed to select on that basis at all and must accept the majority of pupils on a first-come-first-served basis. Meanwhile, faith schools are very much a marginal issue although a point of principle for many Social Democrats.
There is certainly a debate to be had about how we can best use choice to benefit disadvantaged families and Sweden does not have all the answers. However, to have that debate, it would be best to begin with the evidence rather than hearsay.
With regard to the question of social division in education, the recent stream of information concerning the various American presidential candidates contained the fact that Barack Obama’s wife had gained her start in life by attending a so-called “magnet” school, designed to meet the needs of gifted black children in her neighbourhood.
This highlights the contradiction in our own education system. Schools are supposed to go out their way to meet the needs of “ethnic minorities” – indeed, may be subject to various penalties should they fail to do so.
However, the idea of schools going out of their way to meet the needs of the minority of gifted children is met with absolute horror – “elitist!”, “divisive”, etc – as they attempt to close down the remaining grammar schools, call for the end of private education, etc.
Apparently Mrs Obama’s skin colour would be of far greater significance with regard to her place in our education system than her intelligence, although many might claim that it is the latter factor which should be of the greatest importance.
As the American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, once said: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”.
Unfortunately, it is not those with little minds who are likely to suffer the most from this contradiction, but those with the largest, whatever their skin colour.