James Tooley

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

James Tooley has long been a favourite author of mine. Professor of Education Policy at the University of Newcastle, he is a delightful fellow who does a lot of good and is not embarassed to talk sense. His thought-experiment, Education without the State, and the later book, Reclaiming Education, are both well worth a read and a large number of his essays and papers can be found at his website which is HERE.I'm prompted to mention James because of THIS ARTICLE in yesterday's Times. It's this sort of thing:
My recent research has shown that between 65 and 75 per cent of children in the poorest slums in Africa and India are now in private schools. These schools charge low fees, perhaps a couple of pounds per month. They are run by proprietors who are not heartless businessmen, but who provide free places to orphans and those with widowed mothers. When they tested large random samples of children, my teams found that these schools outperform the government alternative. And they do it with teachers paid a fraction of the unionised rates.
Unions here would be up in arms about this. Touchingly, the first concern of many delegates at the conferences is that private enterprise would cut teachers’ pay or make them work longer hours. But if in the free market, schools can find dedicated champions of children’s learning willing to work longer hours, or be flexible on their pay and conditions, then what is wrong with that, if it benefits children? In Africa and India the market has set its own pay and conditions. Even though teachers in private schools are paid less than their government counterparts, and work longer hours, they have higher standards because they know they are accountable to parents. Poor performance could lose them their jobs; in state schools, the unions make sure that nobody can be sacked.
Last week I was in a deprived fishing village in Ghana that boasts six flourishing private schools only yards from the state school. A fisherman with an understanding of economics that would put union officials to shame, who had moved his daughter from state to private school, told me that the private school proprietor needed to satisfy parents like him, otherwise he would go out of business. “That’s why the teachers turn up and teach,” he told me, “because they are closely supervised.” His wife, busy smoking fish for sale in the market, concurred. “In the state school, our daughter learnt nothing. Now she’s back on track.”

posted by DavidF at 15:23