Stories + Views: Proft Making Companies

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Janet Downs: Channel 4 Fact Check asks if Coalition plans for childcare would reduce costs for parents. Or would they increase profits for nursery chains?

It’s a central plank of the Coalition’s plans for early-years reform – that the UK is over-regulated. Removing the red tape and allowing bigger staff-child ratios, schools minister Elizabeth Truss says, will reduce child-care costs. This would bring the UK in line with other countries. And nursery staff would need to have at least Grade C in Maths and English. Channel ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: Independent exclusive – claims emerge of bribes to persuade primary schools to convert

Today’s Independent carries a front page exclusive revealing claims that primary schools are receiving financial inducements to persuade them to convert to academy status. The money is over-and-above the £25,000 given to schools to pay for legal and administrative during the conversion process. Academy conversion has been more popular in secondary schools than in primaries - just over half of secondary schools ... read more and comment →

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Latest comment by Janet Downs: "Rebecca - those who advocate voucher systems don't seem to realise that vouchers alone aren't enough. The OECD found that if market mechanisms in education are to work (and there's doubt that they do) then there needs to be ......"

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Janet Downs: For-profit education providers are being encouraged to run free schools, said Co-op as long ago as June 2011

The Co-operative College found that the free schools approved up to June 2011 didn’t comply with David Cameron’s description of what free schools should be: “I want to explore how we can create a new generation of co-operative schools in Britain, funded by the taxpayer, but owned by parents and the local community”. However, the Co-operative College, which offers help to free ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: A brilliant BrightBlue idea: yet another right-wing think-tank promotes for-profit schools

A Conservative think-tank proposes for-profit schools, the Independent revealed today. It’s not the first right-wing think-tank to push this line.  Policy Exchange has done it, even getting Gove's approval before the last election. So has the Adam Smith Institute. BrightBlue is just the latest. No doubt there’ll be more before the election – softening up the voters to view private sector ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: Serco’s been involved in plans to open secondary school since before last election. It’s due to open this September.

Serco, slated by the NHS watchdog in July 2012 for failures in its out-of-hours service in Cornwall and named in Channel 4’s Dispatches as one of the “fat cats” profiting from lucrative public sector outsourcing deals in March 2011, has been involved in plans to establish a secondary school in Kirklees since before the last election. Proposals by the BBG Parents’ ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: Problems of for-profit school company, Cognita, spread to Bangkok

18 months ago Cognita, the for-profit private school company set up by ex-Ofsted chief Sir Chris Woodhead as a “venture capital investment” *, hit the headlines when parents accused Cognita of “milking” the Southbank International School in London for profit. Cognita denied the claims but Sir Chris told TES* that the dispute had been resolved amicably after his firm agreed ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: There’s no magic bullet to raising educational performance, says EIU report

Number-crunching by the EIU found that when results of three international tests PISA (reading, maths, science), TIMSS (maths, science) and PIRLS (reading) were combined with literacy and graduation rates the UK came sixth in the world. The report, however, is more than a database – it tries to discover the elusive qualities of high-performing school systems. The two countries listed first, ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: Telegraph says New Schools Network supports Gove – should the Charity Commission investigate?

Gove’s success as a wily politician is, according to the Daily Telegraph, because he seeks “to subvert the Whitehall system” and has external support: “Baroness Thatcher relied on the Centre for Policy Studies (she didn’t even trust Tory HQ). Iain Duncan Smith uses the Centre for Social Justice, which designed his “universal credit” welfare revolution. Gove uses the New Schools ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: “Handpicked team” made the DfE the most successful department in the Government’s eyes. But successful at what exactly?

On the Government’s own terms, “the education department has probably been the most successful, and unsurprisingly was highlighted by David Cameron in his age of aspiration conference speech. The education secretary, Michael Gove, has assembled a handpicked team to drive reform relentlessly and take on what he calls "the blob" – the education establishment,” wrote the Guardian. So how has this ... read more and comment →

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Latest comment by Rebecca Hanson: "Is it the 30% of properties big enough for them in the area they live in the private rented sector?..."

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Janet Downs: Watchdogs on the side of the angels

Two watchdogs which investigate whether the Government spends taxpayers’ money wisely, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the National Audit Office (NAO), appeared on BBC Radio 4’s File on Four four months after the NAO published its report describing the risks and opportunities of delivering public services through market mechanisms. Margaret Hodge, PAC chair, told the BBC that “due diligence” was missing in ... read more and comment →

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