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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: 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: “Huge profits being earned by major private companies at taxpayers’ expense,” says BBC

BBC Radio 4’s “File on Four” investigated outsourcing in the light of failures such as the collapse of West Coast mainline plans and the G4S Olympic fiasco. The rush to sign outsourcing contracts, the BBC concluded, could lead to undesirable consequences such as being tied into contracts which delivered inferior services and offered poor value. Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public ... read more and comment →

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Latest comment by Janet Downs: "Last night's Channel 4 Dispatches, Getting Rich on the NHS, (shown again tonight at 8pm on 4seven) investigated Virgin Care. The programme featured one surgery where the number of full-time GPs had fallen and opening times were not extended ......"

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Janet Downs: G4S Olympic fiasco prompts ministerial rethink about private sector involvement in massive projects

There were many heroes in London’s Olympic Games: the athletes, the volunteers, the organisers and the backroom workers. Among these were the police and military who stepped in at the last moment to provide security when the private firm contracted to do this failed to do so. Defence minister, Philip Hammond, told the Independent that the G4S fiasco had demonstrated that ... read more and comment →

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Janet Downs: Is it time to call time on Ofsted?

Tribal, a firm employed to carry out Ofsted inspections, revealed that it doesn’t keep details of the backgrounds of its inspectors (TES 20 July 2012). This followed an earlier admission by Ofsted that it didn’t know how many HMI inspectors, who are directly employed by Ofsted, had experience of schools leadership or whether they had worked in secondaries or primaries. Ofsted ... read more and comment →

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Latest comment by Paul Robson: "It should be shut, tomorrow. You can't reform it or reorganise it, too many vested interests. I sometimes look at OFSTED reports, but only to get actual information about a school, not to know what it is like. It's judgements ......"

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Janet Downs: What did the Education Select Committee say about Ofsted?

The Education Select Committee published a report about Ofsted in March 2011. Here is a summary of its recommendations: 1. Ofsted should be split into two: the Inspectorate for Education and the Inspectorate for Children’s Care. 2. Ofsted’s remit should be clearer – there is confusion as to whether it is a regulatory and inspection body, or an improvement agency. 3. The new ... read more and comment →

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Latest comment by Rebecca Hanson: "if she exists. I suspect she's a figment of your fantasies Ricky...."

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Janet Downs: Gove IS in favour of profit making companies running state schools

“…if CfBT, Serco or anyone else wants to set up a new school, that we will allow you,” said Mr Gove twenty-four minutes into his speech at the Policy Exchange on 17 March 2010 before the last election. Serco is a profit-making company which was in charge of education in Bradford for ten years.  Its contract was not renewed and control ... read more and comment →

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