good questions … what about

10. If your (good) idea of a fair pay review and pay ceiling in the public sector were so important to tell Guardian readers your party had changed last Friday, why aren’t they in your election manifesto the following week?

http://www.nextleft.org/2010/04/so-what-happened-to-camerons-vanishing.html

Unless the ‘operational allowance’ is more to do with how much the troops get paid, I’m wondering how they’re going to double that re. Afghanistan, replace Trident, ‘set up a new permanent military command for homeland defence and security’ and cut MoD running costs by 25%.

#2 – They’re going to wave their magic tory wand whilst chanting their spell of “efficiency savings”.

“2. Where will savings in Education budget come from, given you are spending BSF money on setting up “Free Schools”?”

School choice is more cost effective than public provision (if done properly): http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=4857

7. That is not a postcode lottery, that is ‘democracy’. If Scots decide to have higher taxes and free universities, that isn’t a postcode lottery; that is a decision they have taken. This just localises those sort of decisions even more.

(not that the Conservatives won’t find a way to bugger these things up/give up on these plans, but the manifesto itself is pretty impressive)

Re. Nick @ 4

7. No. It will benefit everyone in an area who votes with the majority, and everyone else rich enough to move to another area. It leaves everyone else unrepresented. It’s basically luck whether 51% of people in your area want improved public services. Ergo, it’s a postcode lottery.

All the more reason to delegate the power, wherever possible, to personal and voluntary transactions. I.e. a market process. Then everyone chooses exactly what they want from a service, whether it is a school, a hospital or a GP practice.

Nick @6

I’ve never been particularly convinced that slavish attachment to the bitch goddess of market forces was a great way to provide education, hospitals or local GP services. The mantra of “choice” trips so easily off the tongues of the crypto Thatcherites in New Labour, that it’s easy to forget one thing: most people aren’t clamouring for choice, and never have been!

What they want are the best possible schools, well funded, and in their local area. I’ve never heard any parent demanding some half baked specialist Academy on the other side of town, run by some bunch of nutters who think Intelligent Design is actually a good thing to teach.

Similarly, people aren’t really interested in league tables for which hospital to go to – they’d really rather their local hospital was well run, well funded, and offered treatment in all areas, rather than closing down wards and departments becuase of some “efficiency” drive driven by some Management Consultant masquerading as a Health Service Manager.

If the English weren’t so anal about education in particular, they would simply make it obligatory for everyone at state school to go to their nearest one… instead most of them still yearn for grammar schools, whilst bemoaning the elitism they represent.

Galen10 -

Nail – head! Simple really, isn’t it?

Will Rhodes @8

Too simple for some perhaps…? I did feel better for getting it off my chest tho’…did it show?

Now if only (faint hope..?) there was a political party I thought might represent my views…..?

Choice is instrumental. I am fully aware that people do not want choice for its own sake. But give people more choice, and the services are likely to get better. And more convenient to access.

Nick @10

Sounds like an exercise in “cart before horsery” to me Nick!

What is the sense in running existing schools/hospitals/GP surgeries down, and then having a Damascene conversion that what you lot all need is “choice”? Of course people will approve of a choice if their existing facilities are crap, have been starved of funds etc.

The demand for funding is limitless. No matter how much money flows into a bureaucratically controlled system, services will ALWAYS be starved of funds. Because the bureaucrats (being in control) will always be taking the cream off the top.

What choice does (when it it designed to be competitive) is put a little pressure on the upper echelons of those sort of systems, essentially rewarding the parts of the system that concentrate more resources more effectively on actually providing the services, because those are the parts of the system that people tend to choose to use. So actually, it is part of the solution to the existing schools/hospitals situation, rather than a distraction.

Nick -

and the services are likely to get better. And more convenient to access.

The NHS has got better? Local councils have got better? Schools have got better?

If the answer to all those is yes – well that leads to another question – why are the politicians still talking about choice in places where choice is supposed to be rife?

Or is it just a political football?

Personally I feel the latter – and please re-read Galen’s post. I have yet to meet one ordinary Joe who wants more choice. Their words not mine “Why can’t they just let me see a doctor and get treatment?” “All I want is one fucking form but I have to go through this shit!” “Why did they close the local school? My kid now has to travel 3 bastard miles … on a fucking bus. Sorry for the swearing, Will, I just am so frustrated, all I want is for things not to be so complicated”.

Risk assessment for taking away the rubbish is what choice gives you.

Galen –

Now if only (faint hope..?) there was a political party I thought might represent my views…..?

It certainly isn’t the Tories or New Labour.

Quite …. simple ….. really!

“Or is it just a political football?”

Actually, much talk of choice is a political football and it is often abused as a term. I am using it in a slightly more specific way.

My point isn’t that people WANT choice. It is that if they actually have choice (that requires people being able to offer them choices too), then the services they receive will tend to be better. The internal markets in the NHS are not very good examples of that, and I do not support their current form.

Galen 10

You’re not just some planet off Star Trek, are you?

I thought I was alone in thinking such thoughts. You know, “Hey, why not have it so all schools are good, then choice would be irrelevant?”

Spot on.

I just heard Theresa May trying to defend the Tory manifesto on PM. Eddy Mair fair laid into her and she seemed to struggle, voice quavering, to utter the complete bollocks they now have to stand by. I think their new manifesto must now be considered, “The longest suicide note in history” to quote that tosser Kaufman. I hope it gets lots of media scrutiny!

UKIP were even more swivel-eyed than expected when they had their moment. Very amusing! The anti-EU stuff had some wild and woolly bolt-ons. I wonder what Tim Worstall thinks?

‘You know, “Hey, why not have it so all schools are good, then choice would be irrelevant?”’

Ok, but what is your objection to using choice to make it so that the schools are good? I am not sure how much more straightforward I can make this instrumental argument.

Take smart phones. All in all, they are a pretty complex bundle of goods and services. Why do they work? Why do they even exist? Partly because people have a choice of phones, and people are allowed to offer new phones to people. The good ones become popular. The bad ones disappear.

I know it is all a bit complicated. People have to shop around etc. But does anyone think we would be better off if the local council decided which phones everyone would have, or Whitehall? After all, people don’t want a choice of phones. They want one good phone!

It’s about how choice is presented and confined that is important. It’s no good just saying “you have a say” with some fairly low barriers for triggering action, or allowing people to do things without an appropriate structure (meaning, essentially, business backing is a pre-requisite for “choice”).

Take police commissioners. It’s not a great idea to let people have a job controlling police strategy and money as an elected position. Aside from the potential abuse in controversial areas (thinking Burnley and surrounding areas) that could see very real prejudice filter through the force, it allows the police to get politicised by communities, pitting different sections of society against each other.

The people that know how the police work best are invariably the police, the people that are the best gauges of how well those police are doing the work are the public. The public MUST have more influence in policing, but the unfettered populism of the elected commissioner idea is not the way to go about it. Instead we should be more active in feedback on our forces, getting real geographic and demographic break downs of how the police are functioning, where the weaknesses in the system is, where the perceived discrimination lies.

Information is key, and the Police have become a “them and us” body which is a shame. The first step to restoring trust is to restore the communication and integration society has with it’s police force. A one off vote for a single individual won’t change that.

@17

Take smart phones. All in all, they are a pretty complex bundle of goods and services. Why do they work? Why do they even exist? Partly because people have a choice of phones, and people are allowed to offer new phones to people. The good ones become popular. The bad ones disappear.

This sums up for me entirely the wrong-headed thinking that goes with Tory “philosophy” (I use the word lightly). Services like schoolsnhospitals are not consumer goods like phones or whatever that can be suddenly improved by the whimsical nature of “the market”.

The “choice” argument is all bullshitting rhetoric. As Will says @13

Personally I feel the latter – and please re-read Galen’s post. I have yet to meet one ordinary Joe who wants more choice. Their words not mine “Why can’t they just let me see a doctor and get treatment?” “All I want is one fucking form but I have to go through this shit!” “Why did they close the local school? My kid now has to travel 3 bastard miles … on a fucking bus. Sorry for the swearing, Will, I just am so frustrated, all I want is for things not to be so complicated”.

Quite so.

Well I am not sure about police commissioners myself. The police, being a form of organised coercion, are always going to be a more difficult nut to crack, in terms of institutional restraints, than more general service provision.

“Services like schoolsnhospitals are not consumer goods like phones or whatever that can be suddenly improved by the whimsical nature of “the market”.”

Why not? That is just an assertion. Food is not just a consumer good. It is essential for life, and plays an incredibly an important role in everyone’s culture too. But it is still provided best through market processes.

@17 Nick

I’m not convinced that choice would work, especially within the current framework. Its simply a ruse by politicians to avoid confronting their past mistakes and to avoid actually having to admit that teachers have a better idea about education than both parents and politicians. (I’ll add the caveat, “Among other things.” in case pedants like OldAndrew read this and berate me for missing something.)

The consequences of choice have led to middle-class flight and people lying about where they live to get their kids into a school they believe is better. Surely schools should get the resources they need to teach the students within their catchment?

We need to do something to try to break down the ghettoes of poverty decades of conservatism have created. No politician has the balls to stand up and argue for the investment in sink estates and struggling schools, let alone policing and other services, that this would need. If we managed to achieve these changes we would be on the road to stopping the other problems associated with such ghettoes. It would be a worthwhile investment.

@21

Perhaps, but when food is essential it is provided for by a monopolistic welfare state, rather than markets. It’s the difference between say private education (market based) and state education (an essential public service).

Nick -

I am not sure how much more straightforward I can make this instrumental argument.

Take smart phones. All in all, they are a pretty complex bundle of goods and services. Why do they work? Why do they even exist?

THAT is where your argument fails, Nick – it is that simple.

Schools, Hospitals, local councils, police etc are NOT smart phones, computers, Wireless routers or anything else. They are public services.

You want a smart phone you go and buy one – hates, throw it away or give it to your ex – buy another. They exist because there is a market for them and as a profit making company, limited or otherwise, will provide that good. End of – great way to make money and rip people off.

Public services are not, not, not something you can go buy, say (ridiculous example) from Hackney when you live in Greater Manchester. The same smart phone you can buy from frigging Hong Kong if you want.

Choice is bollox in Public Services. Choice was – and still is, a matter that those on the right (including New Labour) want to make public services make a profit, but even Tim Worstall will tell you you cannot do that if you only have a closed system. Now, where it would be different is if you actually COULD buy your local services throughout the UK as a whole – that would be a larger market – but you cannot. Get your bins emptied from a service in London, your local council services, all of them split up from wherever you choose. See how that works out for ya.

Because of this choice bollox you now have more managers than anything else.

Pick up the phone, ask Wandsworth council to come get this fly tipping from Greenock – it ain’t going to happen.

@22

There is no particular evidence that forcing people to attend particular schools improves social cohesion or decreases poverty. The US public school system, for example, has been desegragated for nearly 50 years but the ghettos are still there. In fact, one school choice program in Harlem seems to be finally breaking down some of those barriers by offering black children the opportunities they never had when they had no choice.

In contrast, relatively cohesive nations like the Netherlands and Denmark have had things like religious and other communal segregated schooling for years (based on parental choice again).

@ Nick

As an aside, I just looked at your website. As a comics fan I must say, good on yer!

“They are public services.”

Telephones were a public service. These things can change.

No one like to go out of their way to get a haircut. Or a pair of glasses. So how come these things are readily available in a competitive market place? Why couldn’t, for example, independent rubbish collectors compete in the same district? Just like different companies are prepared to set up your Internet.

Of course, some services REALLY are public. Like street lighting. But some services have been shown to work effectively using market mechanisms. I don’t know why everyone gets so het up about that.

“As an aside, I just looked at your website. As a comics fan I must say, good on yer!”

Thanks. See, I am not all bad!

Nick @ 17

Ok, but what is your objection to using choice to make it so that the schools are good?

What evidence have you got that ‘choice’ in the public sector is likely or even able to drive up standards?

How can you possibly compare buying a smartphone to getting a life saving operation or your child’s education? What kind of ‘choice’ is that? Perhaps more importantly, how can you possibly provide that choice to everybody?

Let us say you need a life saving operation. Let us say (hypothetically, of course) that you could actually quantify the best surgeon in the best hospital at the best time. Obviously, everybody would ‘choose’ the surgeon/hospital the best survival rate. So does that mean that that ONE surgeon gets a list a mile long whilst every other surgeon in the region twiddles his thumbs?

Surely to Christ the best thing to do is pool our knowledge and make sure the standard improves?

What about schools? Think longer than the two seconds mark, for fucks sake. If you give EVERYONE the absolute choice, and everyone chooses the best school, then what? You have to select those pupils and guess what the school gets the choice, not the parent. The parents then have to jump through hoops like performing seals, it no longer becomes the duty of the school to pull its socks up.

Surely to fuck you can see that ‘choice’ only occurs when supply outstrips demand? If he had ‘too many’ schools or hospitals then we wouldn’t have the problem we have.

This is exactly why you need a market mechanism. It is markets that tend to supply goods and services in accordance with what people demand. That is why, for example, there aren’t too few supermarkets or too many hairdressers.

Consider other areas of education that are more marketised. Are there too few textbooks available off Amazon? Too few books in the bookshops? Too few and low quality tutors? Are private IT and technician courses of a poor quality?

“Surely to Christ the best thing to do is pool our knowledge and make sure the standard improves?”

That is exactly what a market does. It diffuses information about the quality of particular service across a whole society. Bad services get better or disappear, and are replaced by better or at least more efficiently produced ones.

On evidence, this is a good place to get started: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=d2IbnWDPnLYC&dq=school+choice+the+findings&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Actually, I can recommend a great little article on the informational role of market institutions: http://www.politics.qmul.ac.uk/staff/pennington/POL%20STUD.pdf

Bare in mind that the goal is the same. Good local schools for everyone. It is just the mechanism for producing it that is under dispute.

Hopi Sen: “1. Why is a pledge on cutting inheritence tax for millionaires a higher national priority than reducing the deficit or tax cuts for low income single parents?”

Let’s look at inheritance tax sensibly. Millionaires don’t pay IHT; they pay financial advisors and accountants to ensure that their money is tied up neatly away from the tax man. The policy panders to the middle classes who think that the money from the sale of their house should go to their kids. But the longer you live, the more likely you are to use your house for equity release and the less likely you are to have wealth that incurs IHT.

We should be honest in explaining that increasing the IHT threshold makes very little difference to anyone. Few estates (6% according to wikipedia) are subject to IHT and the number will fall, given the collapse of cross party consensus regarding funding of care for the elderly.

It’s a nasty, petty policy that shows the Conservatives at their worst.

Nick @ 30

Are there too few textbooks available off Amazon? Too few books in the bookshops? Too few and low quality tutors? Are private IT and technician courses of a poor quality?

Er, I wonder how you compare the supply of books to the supply of good teachers, classes sizes and schools? The ‘market’ is not going to build schools and educate teachers on spec, are they? These are long term commitments, not short term profit opportunities. Sure a publisher can extend a print run of books, but what about building a school? Who is going to want to build a school in an attempt to educate pupils from a catchment area already notorious for failing educational standards? Eton and Harrow are hardly likely to be opening branches in our inner cities, no matter how successful their current business model is, they are not transferring anytime soon.

Guess what? It is the same for the rest of the market as well. People like Waitrose, M&S and John Lewis don’t move to these places either, because the market does not deliver high quality to places that cannot afford it. These places are left with shitty little shops, shitty little cafes and shitty little chance of progress either.

The Right are always telling us about the how the market solves problems, well maybe it does in affluent areas in the Country, but in those areas where there is little money to compete for, they get left with Hobson’s choice.

You are looking for a Dogmatic answer to complex problems, well sorry, Nick, look at real life for second and you will see why your Dogma stinks.

That is exactly what a market does. It diffuses information about the quality of particular service across a whole society. Bad services get better or disappear, and are replaced by better or at least more efficiently produced ones.

Bollocks. The market does nothing of the sort, not in a real sense. We are not talking about designing an airtime contract for a 3G phone, we are talking about people’s lives. If we have a surgeon who has a higher success rate, we do not let his counterparts’ body count rise and ‘let the market sort it out’, we should be looking directly at what he is doing right, not a shareholders, but as human beings.

If you buy a sub standard pizza, you stop going to the take away and nobody dies. If your surgeon does not have the information that he needs, you die. There is a difference.

“Guess what? It is the same for the rest of the market as well. People like Waitrose, M&S and John Lewis don’t move to these places either, because the market does not deliver high quality to places that cannot afford it. These places are left with shitty little shops, shitty little cafes and shitty little chance of progress either.”

1. On the market mechanisms used in parts of the Europe, the FUNDING still comes from the state, and that can be designed equitably so that education providers have as much incentive to serve those on lower incomes as the rest.

2. I have lived in areas with people on low income, and find the “shitty little” cafes and shops to be excellent. 99p stores are great in particular! Apart from tripping over Daily Mail columnists spying on the fabled underclass for one of their snooty articles. Certainly better than trying to get a reasonably priced sandwich in West Hampstead. M&S and Waitrose are hardly good value, especially for food. I pity those who spend all their money there.

And there is no dogma to my position. It is a theory and it happens to work when properly put in practice.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that public services could be improved and modernised. Moreover, there is nothing wrong with taking lessons from the private sector and applying them to the public sector. However, Nick, you are guilty of a ‘ fallacy of composition ‘ in taking examples from micro-markets for consumer goods and services and applying them to the public goods market.

For public goods think about state provided health care funded by contributions by all. Some people will use more than they ever contribute but because risks are pooled some will use less. A private sector health insurance provider faces a whole bunch of different incentives. They want to gain customers. However, their incentives are to gain customers who are least likely to make a call on the policy. Therefore, they want customers but don’t actually want anyone to use the service. Moreover, private health insurance is a ‘ lemons market ‘ as there is asymmetrical information. Since an individual has better information on their own body better than the provider costs are higher than the risks because people lie. Furthermore, the insurance companies know that ill people are more likely to seek cover than healthy people. That is just one example in public goods where far from the private sector driving costs down they increase them. You simply can’t take the market for varieties of cheese and apply throughout society.

Richard: The majority of healthcare is NOT a public good, in the sense of being non-rivalrous and non-excludable. The exceptions are things like dealing with communicable diseases, so vaccination programs and STD clinics are arguably providing a public health service besides a private good. Most healthcare is a private good.

Now there is certainly assymetrical information in healthcare which isn’t present in other markets. But I wasn’t suggesting a completely unregulated market. Your example focusses on health insurance, and the Dutch have solved your problem by having a system of compulsory insurance combined with a risk pool (and Government top-ups for people with poor prospects). But health insurance is not that great a way of providing most health care, mostly because insurance is for things that are unlikely to happen or only happen occasionally (a car accident/breakdown, theft, your death etc.). Healthcare needs happen to almost everybody at some point so it would be better if the funding reflected that.

@25 Nick

“In contrast, relatively cohesive nations like the Netherlands and Denmark have had things like religious and other communal segregated schooling for years (based on parental choice again).”

The point about more socially cohesive places like those you quote, is that by and large almost everyone just goes to their local school. I have a Dutch friend who thinks the British (or more correctly English) attitude to comprehensive education is bonkers. According to him, the only people in his experience (in different parts of the Netherlands) who didn’t attend their closest schools were the relatively few who went to private fee paying schools. Simple, effective… and possibly one of the reasons their societies aren’t as class ridden as
ours?

Listening to the Tory plans for education simply affirms my initial disquiet. “Choice” in the provision of large scale education is a chimera. I don’t WANT keen amateurs running my schools. As a parent I haven’t got the time or the inclination to get involved in running my kids school (or local law enforcement or health services). That’s what pay taxes for. My concern is that the money is spent wisely. I don’t expect private industry and/or charity to “pick up the slack” so I can pay lower taxes. Neither do I want to contribute via school fees, private medical insurance etc.

I want the best public services that can be provided, acknowledging that funding isn’t limitless. I want them provided by professionals. I want them to be accountable, yes… but I’m not interested in ideologically driven notions of market driven choice in the provision of vital PUBLIC services.

I want the best public services that can be provided, acknowledging that funding isn’t limitless. I want them provided by professionals. I want them to be accountable, yes… but I’m not interested in ideologically driven notions of market driven choice in the provision of vital PUBLIC services.

So what do you propose? We’ve tried managerialism since ’97, but people remain dissatisfied.

One thing we should all worry about is who would be enthusiastic enough to take on the running of our schools under Tory proposals. Most people can’t be bothered and want it done by professionals. The only people likely to want to get involved have their own agendas.

If Call-Me-Dave and his chums have their way can we look forward to our local scientology comp or creationist primary?

I know people will argue that inspectors will maintain standards. I still think it would be a retrograde step by legitimising nutcases and giving them authority rather than marginalising them.

@40 Yurrzem!

Agreed. I hate the idea of faith schools in particular, and giving particularist interest groups public money to encourage more Academies, and schools specialising in languages, or drama, or science just feels instinctively wrong to me.

I’m suspicious of the motives of the groups who want to “get involved” (yeah, I know it’s probably cynical..but there you go). I don’t want the likes of Peter Vardy setting up schools to teach creationism, particularly not with tax payers money. It’s as bad as giving homeopathists money the NHS could use for treatments that actually worked.

“So what do you propose? We’ve tried managerialism since ‘97, but people remain dissatisfied.”

It depends why they are dissatisfied. If its just because they’ve read bollocks on the internet or read negative publicity that isn’t true, then the problem is essentially perception rather than reality. Thus the solution is better PR

I think we need a more intelligent response really based on 2 questions – what are the main problems with the system as it is?, and how can these problems be solved?

Most rants about the education system in the media and in bloggertarian land don’t even bother answering the first save for vague statements about standards, discipline and political correctness (whatever that is), and regardless of what the issue is advocate vouchers. Imagine 2 groups discussing the issue in the pub – the first comprises people who read libertarian blogs and the second comprises teachers, head teachers and academics who have spent years studying the issue. You can predict the first will very quickly settle on vouchers as a solution to unspecified problems with the situation. The second group on the other hand will have a far greater range of discussion, the sharing of experiences, and identify specific issues with specific solutions.

@39 ukliberty

“So what do you propose? We’ve tried managerialism since ‘97, but people remain dissatisfied.”

Ah.. there’s the rub. I’m not saying I have the answer sadly. If I had a magic wand, I’d probably have been co-opted by the Caring Conservatives already huh?

I think people are suspicious of “managerialism” as you call it, because it is often (whether fairly or not) perceived as wasteful/bureaucratic/a distraction. I’m not even saying there isn’t a place for some elements of managerialism, or that change isn’t needed.

Call me a died in the wool collectivist if you will, but in the end I just don’t buy into the whole concept that “choice” or “managerialism” are panacea’s to cure the ills of the education system, the NHS or policing. There IS a difference between the provision of public services like these, and other services. It may be appropriate to learn from the private sector… but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

The issue is that neither the Tories or Labour are being honest. Decent public services cost money. By all means let’s look at ways of alleviating the demands on taxpayers, but let’s not pretend that government (of whatever stripe) can or should abrogate it’s responsibilities. Thatcherite voodoo economists and New Labour’s spin obsessed wonks are equally guilty of making promises they couldn’t keep – we’re sleep walking into a US style society with a poor underclass of dispossessed helots, a frosting of overpaid plutocrats, and the mich cow centre ground who have to run fast to stand still.

Time for something new perhaps?

Have to agree with Galen10

Thankfully in Wales we have devolution, which acts as a bugger to the tory localism tosh. But the underpinning issue is that most parents don’t want to run schools; they barely have time and the energy to work, eat, parent and generally live their life.

Of course, the Tories know this is aimed at their type of people. The same people who feel the public sector buffer against wealth buying the best public services at the expense of the little needs to be ended.

I wasn’t ‘having a go’ @39, by the way – I’m clueless. I’m inclined to agree with Planeshift @42. But I’m very much inclined to agree with Chris Dillow here.

Galen10,

Call me a died in the wool collectivist if you will, but in the end I just don’t buy into the whole concept that “choice” or “managerialism” are panacea’s to cure the ills of the education system, the NHS or policing. There IS a difference between the provision of public services like these, and other services. It may be appropriate to learn from the private sector… but let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Of course not. I merely take issue with the apparently automatic antipathy toward ‘markets’ or ‘competition’. I’m sure there are some areas where they are inappropriate. But it seems to me we ought to try to find out.

UKL @ 45

Of course not. I merely take issue with the apparently automatic antipathy toward ‘markets’ or ‘competition’. I’m sure there are some areas where they are inappropriate. But it seems to me we ought to try to find out.

But ‘competition’ only works if there is a surplus of supply, as rivals need to improve, find a niche market or both. With schools and hospitals there is a shortage of supply, therefor the idea that ‘competition’ is somehow going to drive up standards, in any meaningful way, is complete nonsense.

To be honest though, most of the problems with health and education are not supply/demand issues. It is not competition that improve doctors, it is better clinical teaching methods. Same with education, most of the problems with education are little to do with the standard of teachers, but the social conditions the pupils come from.

If you have a cohort of badly motivated youngsters, perhaps some have English as a second language, perhaps others with little concept of discipline and perhaps more who (for whatever reason) have no value of education, then how can opening another school two miles down the road improve that? How can the education system change the attitudes of youngsters who see the drug dealer drive a 4×4 whilst the person who follow more conventional route to employment drive a battered old Ford? If those pupils are simply not interested in learning, in what way is two schools competing for those pupil likely to change that? How can you blame a teacher because a fourteen year thinks being a rapper is a better source of income than learning a trade? Just like the NHS. There is no way competing hospitals can influence people’s behaviour. If people insist in smoking, drinking and shovelling as much food into their mouth as possible, then how does having two hospitals competing for business change that? People project society’s problems onto teachers and doctors and blame them for failure.

If we had ‘too many’ good schools and ‘too many’ good hospitals then we could see competition at work, but then again if we had too many hospitals we would not have the problem we have. Right now the competition is not the providers competing for custom, it is the customers competing for places with the providers.

@45 ukliberty

I didn’t take it as having a go: I share your state of clueless-ness to be honest!

I’m honestly not “automatically” antipathetic towards markets, competition.. I just have this vague, social democratic, collectivist, crypto-scandinavian fear of the type of society engendered by compassionate Conservatism, or even worse by US style republicanism/libertarianism.

I’m one of the large number of totally disillusioned I suppose; hoping for the best, but fearing the worst. Part of me honestly wants a hung parliament just as a punch in the nose to the major parties, but I’m more and more convinced that it might be the only real way to bring about ANY change, never mind radical change.

“The point about more socially cohesive places like those you quote, is that by and large almost everyone just goes to their local school.”

Now you are the one putting the cart before the horse. Most Dutch people GO to their local school, because most of them are fairly uniformly good. The reason why? They have the choice not to. In the same way, most people go to their local supermarket regardless the brand. Why? Because if was that much worse than the competitors it wouldn’t last very long. The purpose of choice is to make it possible for people to go to their local school, and for that school to still feel the need to keep their service quality high.

“But ‘competition’ only works if there is a surplus of supply, as rivals need to improve, find a niche market or both. With schools and hospitals there is a shortage of supply, therefor the idea that ‘competition’ is somehow going to drive up standards, in any meaningful way, is complete nonsense.”

So long as you have Government control there will always be a shortage. That is partly why the current system is so uncompetitive. Once you have a market in this sector, then we will see some competition.

“I’m honestly not “automatically” antipathetic towards markets, competition.. I just have this vague, social democratic, collectivist, crypto-scandinavian fear of the type of society engendered by compassionate Conservatism, or even worse by US style republicanism/libertarianism.”

So why is it that you are against the sort of market reforms that Scandinavian countries have already introduced? Sweden has an internal market in healthcare and in schools.

Why not just call a spade a spade?

People want the best schools but are unwilling to pay for them. Added to that a large proportion, if not the majority, want all schools to be like Grammar Schools, because – deep down – the vast majority of people are snobs.

Survey after survey tells us that working-class people insist they are middle-class, and that is because it is ingrained upon them that that is what they should aspire to be. That isn’t rejected because 1 people are snobs and they like that title rather than the working-class one 2 so many people are ill-educated because of the past systems we have had 3 the UK is still, even today, a class ridden society.

I really don’t care whether you agree with me or not. But class still plays a great part in all these arguments. It is just that so many will not admit it.

Schools should be run by teachers – fuck that choice bollox. Hospitals should make people well if they can and treat what they can and help those who cannot be helped until their last breath – fuck choice.

If you want good schools and good hospitals – pay for them. Some namby-pamby idea of competition will not bring costs down in those kind of public services. They will only add another managerial tier. Getting rid of those will mean that money goes into patient care and kids education, not on over-inflated pensions, nice cars and idiotic wages. What the Tories are advocating and promoting as compassionate Conservatism will mean chaos, and if you cannot see that then visit a planet where trees are neon red – end of.

@48 Nick

“Now you are the one putting the cart before the horse. Most Dutch people GO to their local school, because most of them are fairly uniformly good. The reason why? They have the choice not to..”

Look, I’m no claiming to be an expert on the Dutch education system, I’m just going on what I’ve been told, which I accept is hardly definitive. However, having talked to quite a lot of people from the Netherlands, Germany and Scandinavia, it’s obvious that there IS an issue here. Your point isn’t right surely: Dutch parents don’t actually have a choice, other than to send kids to private schools, but then again they don’t NEED a choice.

I’m inclined to agree with Will @51, and that there is a lot of snobbery and class conscious involved harking back to the golden days of grammar schools (God help us all!!)

I imagine that the fact is in other places, the schools are good because they are well funded, and there is a consensus that it makes no sense to send their kids elsewhere: isn’t that what most people here want? All parents I’ve talked to here (literally without exception) would prefer to send their kids to the closest school, not have the “choice” to drive or bus them for miles.

@50 Nick

“So why is it that you are against the sort of market reforms that Scandinavian countries have already introduced? Sweden has an internal market in healthcare and in schools.”

I’m not saying I’m against any manifestation of reform, or that we couldn’t learn from how they handle things in other countries. From what I’ve read, there have been issues with the free market approach to schools in Sweden – tho again, I’m no expert. Also, I think the Swedes are probably starting from a slightly better starting point than we are in terms of standards, levels of social cohesion, egalitarianism etc.

I agree that class plays a tremendous role in British education policy. They also play a major role in the US, but with a greater emphasis on a racial divide. It hasn’t stopped market reforms, where they have been implemented, from making improvements, especially to those from pooer backgrounds. So I take the point, no reform is going to make everything rosey overnight, but it doesn’t count against permitting school choice.

Also, Galen, I am not sure exactly what your friend means by fee paying private schools (I am sure there are a handful) but my understanding is that most privately schools in the Netherland are publicly funded.

Here is a recent paper on competition in education in the Netherlands for example: http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202009/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20June%202009/cesifo1_wp2676.pdf

Jim, I’m thinking about your comment, but this struck me:

There is no way competing hospitals can influence people’s behaviour. If people insist in smoking, drinking and shovelling as much food into their mouth as possible, then how does having two hospitals competing for business change that?

What business is it of hospitals to influence such behaviour? (of course a doctor should suggest not drinking so much etc, but your paragraph sounds rather stronger.)

Galen10,

I imagine that the fact is in other places, the schools are good because they are well funded…

How does the distribution of money in the education system in those other places compare to that here? Here for example the schools don’t get all the money.

And I recently read that “the constant stream of unfunded government initiatives” is a pressure on funding.

UKL @ 55

What business is it of hospitals to influence such behaviour?

It is not their business that is the point! If a given hospital or health trust for that matter, has a poor survival rates for cancer for example, it could be that people in its catchment area smoke, drink and eat too much. Yet that hospital is being judged on figures that are based on behaviour that are out-with it’s Control. The hospital has absolutely no way of influencing how much its patients smoke, so how can ‘competition’ between hospitals improve cancer survival rates, for example? Let us say that the hospital are dealing with chronic illnesses associated with poverty. Well that hospital cannot bring people out of poverty, so all it can do is treat people as best they can. So if their budgets suffer as a result, then what? We mark them down as ‘unsatisfactory’ because they overspend their budgets?

Whereas the next hosital deals with less people in poverty and they get a gold star because their paitents get better survival rates, less chronic illness etc?

Nick @ 49

. Once you have a market in this sector, then we will see some competition.

To what end though? If you have a school were say, 75% of the pupils do not speak English as a first language and say 60% of the pupils are not interested in learning (for whatever reason) how can ‘competition’ rectify that and improve that school? It cannot, the best that school can do to up it’s grades is exclude the worse pupils. That means the school has the whip hand over the parents.

So, how do you measure success in that school compared to the predominately middle class school down the road? If that school is oversubscribed, then that school has the whip hand as well. Then where is the incentive to introduce a new school to soak up the surplus? Given that no-one wants the undesirable pupils, who in their right mind will open a school for those pupils in the more deprived estates?

Is it possible that you have simplified a complex my means of a false premise; namely that under-performing schools are the result of under performing teachers? Do you make room for the possibility that an underperforming school has underlying social issues out-with the scope of education?

I am not actually all that interested in ‘measuring’ from a sort of managerialist perspective how good a school is. The parents and pupils deciding which school to go to will do that measurement for you. That means that education providers will have as much incentive to open schools in poor areas as rich areas; they won’t risk getting punished for having poor standards if the main judgement of whether they stay open or not is whether people choose to send their children there.

“Do you make room for the possibility that an underperforming school has underlying social issues out-with the scope of education?”

Sure. What of it? By definition, those problems can only be solved by policies that are outside the scope of education. But that isn’t a reason not to reform education in areas where it can be made better.

As it happens, some of these major social issues often ARE down to poorly performing schools, among other things. Which is why children from poor backgrounds can do better when they are allowed to exercise a choice.

@54 Nick

The evidence from a scan of the paper in your link seems inconclusive at best, as the “outside” option in the Netherlands seems more likely to be sending your kid to a Catholic school (don’t even get me started on the evils of faith schools!!).

As I said, I’m no expert on the Netherlands, but people I know from there (and yes, I know it’s circumstantial evidence, but bear with me) have told me they think the UK system for primary and secondary schools is nuts. In their experience of different parts of the Netherlands, everyone went to their nearest school, unless their parents were educating them in the equivalent of a UK public school i.e. could afford private school fees.

Obviously Dutch parents are doing this because there is no value sending their kids to a different school across town, as standards must be pretty uniform. Contrast that with the situation here. Now what is wrong with this picture?

@55 ukliberty

“How does the distribution of money in the education system in those other places compare to that here? Here for example the schools don’t get all the money.”

I don’t know, but my point isn’t really about the economics of the issue, or the details of who controls the money, or how it is spent (important tho’ these issues are), it is a more general point that “choice” in this context is neither helpful, nor something that there is a real demand for.

Of course, if your local schools are crap, and you are allowed by the system (and able) to bus your kids to a “better” school miles away, that’s what many parents will do. Some of course will vote with their feet and move house. I’ve seen it happen in the town where I live, people picking and choosing which school to send their kids to.. the whole system is bonkers.

Nick @ 59

That means that education providers will have as much incentive to open schools in poor areas as rich areas

How on Earth can you justify such a crass remark like that? Where is the incentive for anyone to open a school in such an area? That school is not being measured by how good the education standards are, but rather how good the standard of pupils are. Why would anyone build and run a school that isn’t going to atrract decent pupils? If the pupils fail to reach the standard it will lose funding and close pretty quickly afterwards. Why build a school in that area when you can build a school in an area where parents are rich enough to afford private tutors if their little cherub is failing maths? You will gain from the parents hard work without extra effort.

Sure. What of it? By definition, those problems can only be solved by policies that are outside the scope of education. But that isn’t a reason not to reform education in areas where it can be made better.

How can it be made better? In what way will having school compete improve anything, within that school. Perhaps if you gave us an example of what could be improved.

As it happens, some of these major social issues often ARE down to poorly performing schools, among other things. Which is why children from poor backgrounds can do better when they are allowed to exercise a choice.

What evidence have you of that statement? Children from poorer background will NEVER be given the choice of schools, the schools will always have the choice of who to take on. You surely must be able to see this?