Education vouchers - 9 comments

I'm sure this won't endear me to fellow Labour bloggers, but the Economist (actually, it's now last week's edition - sorry) has an interesting evidence of successful experiments involving school vouchers:

[...] Harry Patrinos, an education economist at the World Bank, cites a Colombian programme to broaden access to secondary schooling, known as PACES, a 1990s initiative that provided over 125,000 poor children with vouchers worth around half the cost of private secondary school. Crucially, there were more applicants than vouchers. The programme, which selected children by lottery, provided researchers with an almost perfect experiment, akin to the “pill-placebo” studies used to judge the efficacy of new medicines. The subsequent results show that the children who received vouchers were 15-20% more likely to finish secondary education, five percentage points less likely to repeat a grade, scored a bit better on scholastic tests and were much more likely to take college entrance exams.

Voucher programmes in several American states have been run along similar lines. Greg Forster, a statistician at the Friedman Foundation, a charity advocating universal vouchers, says there have been eight similar studies in America: seven showed statistically significant positive results for the lucky voucher winners; the eighth also showed positive results but was not designed well enough to count.

The voucher pupils did better even though the state spent less than it would have done had the children been educated in normal state schools. American voucher schemes typically offer private schools around half of what the state would spend if the pupils stayed in public schools. The Colombian programme did not even set out to offer better schooling than was available in the state sector; the aim was simply to raise enrolment rates as quickly and cheaply as possible.

These results are important because they strip out other influences. Home, neighbourhood and natural ability all affect results more than which school a child attends. If the pupils who received vouchers differ from those who don't—perhaps simply by coming from the sort of go-getting family that elbows its way to the front of every queue—any effect might simply be the result of any number of other factors. But assigning the vouchers randomly guarded against this risk. [...]

More evidence that choice can raise standards for all comes from Caroline Hoxby, an economist at Harvard University, who has shown that when American public schools must compete for their students with schools that accept vouchers, their performance improves. Swedish researchers say the same. It seems that those who work in state schools are just like everybody else: they do better when confronted by a bit of competition."

There must be a chance of such a scheme being introduced, whatever Labour activists hope. Why? Because voters are (evidently) riled; because private education is - say the figures - becoming a socially acceptable rather than an exceptional choice for parents; and because there'll come a point when schools have the resources they need, the buildings, the staff, the uniforms, the energised, performance-paid Heads, the rooms full of flat-screen monitors, but with limited success in equipping children for the world of work, training, and higher education.

Clearly the introduction of vouchers shouldn't be intended as a substitute for other education policies, but if it happens to work - as it appears to in Sweden - perhaps it can replace other policies that don't work? Perhaps, also, our current resistance stems from unfamiliarity or national peculiarity, rather than an internationally-consistent ideological position? Why not pick a council and try an experiment? If it appears to work, add another council; if not, scrap it and try something else. I can't see a quicker or cheaper way to find out the truth, once and for all.