Private schools are lining up to become free schools, which are subsidized by the government, so that more people can get the opportunity to benefit from the large variety of educational systems they have to offer.
The National Union of Teachers' general secretary, Kevin Courtney, says it is ''incredible'' that the the Department for Education slashes the budget of already existing state schools and yet somehow finds that they have enough money to turn private schools into free schools.
David Mann, head of a future free school, claims that creating these new free schools will help raise the quality level of education by creating some competitiveness between the already existing state schools, which do not have a high level of education according to Mann, and the new free schools.
Original Article:
--- http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/apr/12/private-schools-conversion
My take on this:
I think that granting more people access to non-standard ways of education, by taking away the insane prices private schools charge and making them free instead, is a good idea since it grants more freedom in choice of education for parents. However, it seems that the already existing state schools have to suffer for the new free schools to work and personally I don't think that making one group suffer to make another one flourish is a fair trade-off. This decision should only be made if it has more pros than cons and at the moment it seems as though the pros and cons are equally distributed.
