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> The business model is simple: you buy smaller independent schools and incorporate them into the growing groups and then make a profit by targeting marketing t
by joshuaissac 6y ago
> The business model is simple: you buy smaller independent schools and incorporate them into the growing groups and then make a profit by targeting marketing to easy-to-teach, independent students [...] With a sold-out, simpler student base, the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density, resource staff
> When the profitable students have been absorbed by the independent school, the municipal school is left with a more difficult student base
This is the gist of the article, that private entities are driving up the government's cost of education by attracting cheaper-to-teach students and then claiming the government funding allocated to those students. The municipality is then left to teach the harder-to-teach students. The funding per student is presumably averaged, so this is similar to the concept of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.
But is there anything stopping the municipalities themselves from competing in the same way? A group of municipalities could also pool resources to reduce costs and attract cheaper-to-teach students.
I think the article focuses too much on private profit, with only a small paragraph each about how the independent schools are given an unfair information advantage, and how some of them are controlled by religious extremists:
> National Agency for Education made all statistics about individual schools secret
> a school system that increases segregation and allows jihadist schools run by people with links to Islamism and violent extremism
- SiempreViernes 6y agoUh, are you suggesting the municipalities should just deny education to the unprofitable students? Not sure how concentrating easy students would help if you still have to teach the complex ones too, and since the municipalities must provide education to eveyone they can't avoid them like the profit schools do.
- distances 6y agoI think the parent is proposing different municipal schools for easy-to-teach and hard-to-teach pupils. I don't see any way to achieve this politically, ever.
- SiempreViernes 6y agoIn some sense it already exists, the kids with severe developmental challenges have their own schools for example. I guess the real problem is that nobody wants to send their kids to the "cheap" school, which is likely going to be filled with kids from affluent parents because study outcome is to first order just a function of parent income.
- joshuaissac 6y ago> Uh, are you suggesting the municipalities should just deny education to the unprofitable students? I did not suggest anything like that anywhere in my comment. Municipalities have to teach hard/expensive students in either scenario. Based on the article, they are leaving easy/cheap students on the table for the private sector, who can profit from scale and from the students being cheaper to teach. There will be independent schools that only accept easy students whether the municipalities like it or not. The choice municipalities have is whether to run their own schools attracting such students and socialise some of the profits instead of letting it all go to the private sector.