If it’s Monday, it must be Sweden

Apparently the latest educational flavour of the month in party policy circles is the Swedish system

Today the Guardian reports on a plan to allow a Swedish profit firm the opportunity to open city academies in England.

The Kunskapsskolan schools are run like universities (no, not lots of beer and the other stuff that students get up to when they should be hitting the books) in that they involve personalised learning.

Says the paper:

‘Each child has a weekly target in every subject. Fail and their personal tutor will want to know why at their weekly meeting. So will their parents, who can follow the minutiae of their progress online. These teenagers have targets, but complete freedom in deciding how to get there. It’s more like a university than a school.

Anders Hultins, co-founder of the chain of 30 Kunskapsskolan schools, said: “We are popular in Sweden as an alternative to the teacher-led factory model of education. When you see a normal school you will find classrooms of equal sizes and a bell ringing; there is factory thinking behind that. What students do in Kunskapsskolan is decide for themselves, for their own needs rather than for collective needs. There are no bells in our schools or a schedule that you repeat every week.”’

To me it sounds like a bit of a gimmick. Sweden doesn’t do nearly as well as neighbouring Finland, and it seems part of the latest fad of offering diversity and choice. More, allowing a cost cutting firm to trial (okay, they initially won’t be able to retain any profit made) out this scheme suggests that the government (and the other parties who said they support the Swedish academies) want reform on the cheap.

How about sustained investment, giving the less academically able something useful to do, and providing teachers and schools with the help they need in supporting children and families who face financial and other pressures in their communities?

Try that for 15-20 years and let’s see where that gets us.