If the government’s current Education Bill ever gets through we can add Cadbury Schweppes, Toshiba and EDF to the list of companies who might be interested in establishing links with Trust schools (or whatever they end up being called).
According to recent leaks from within the DfES the number of schools currently interested in becoming a Trust School is just 25 out of the 25,500 schools in England! While this has made good headlines, it fails to take into account the large number of Specialist, Academy, Foundation, and Voluntary-aided schools who already have links with sponsors and external organisations.
We talked to Microsoft, one of the companies who have met with the Prime Minister and Ruth Kelly about this concept. Here’s what Stephen Uden, Microsoft (UK’s) Head of Education Relations had to say.
‘We believe that by building on our existing partnerships with organisations such as the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, that the appropriate involvement of businesses in education will bring benefits to employers and learners alike.
It is not about Microsoft running schools. We are committed to genuine collaboration within the education sector and believe that we can make valuable contributions in the areas of skills, ICT in the curriculum, the use of ICT for learning and work-based learning.
We are already working with Monkseaton Language College and the Open University to create one of the very first Trust schools with the aim of:
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providing more open and equal access to education
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developing replicable innovations in education which draw on the key competencies of each organization
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working together to share any successful innovations developed so that they can be replicated in other schools or appropriate learning contexts.’
Getting any company, let alone one as high-profile as Microsoft, to comment directly on this matter has not been an easy task. Yet this one statement emasculates most of the arguments put forward by the Bill’s opponents, whose underlying criticism seems to be that the philosophy and ethos of those outside education (i.e. in the private sector) is incompatible with those within it.
The concessions made to the Bill’s opponents shows that there is still a fundamental mistrust of the private sector in many parts of the current government that may never be able to be addressed.
