{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021080368906455864, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.074, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A ‘capability approach’ to school choice: rescuing school improvement from the distraction of marketisation

A stranger in a town asks a bystander, “Can you direct me to the railway station?” “Certainly,” answers the native, pointing in the opposite direction, towards the post office, “and would you post this letter for me on your way?” “No problem” says the stranger, resolving to open it and steal its contents! Amartya Sen constructs this scenario to demonstrate the absurdity of the idea that selfishness by individuals necessarily results in the collective good being served: the letter is never posted; the railway station never found; there is nothing of value in the letter. So it is with schooling, says the Left. The state must purge the marketplace of choice because choice is a selfishness that serves ill the common good. Yet in developed countries like the UK and the US, where there is still a near monopoly of state-funded schooling despite an emerging consensus that is moving public service provision towards a mixed economy, an emerging body of research suggests that individuals for whom public education is a necessity are also those best served by its alternatives. Thus is a tension emerging between the rhetoric of the public good and the actualité of everyday personal disadvantage; or as Chomsky would say, between doctrine and reality. The Right also proclaims its dissent, positing that the new mixed economies in schooling are destined to failure because choice programmes do not go far enough. They defer to historical passions on the Left, it is claimed, whereby failing state schools continue to be supported by the public purse without any realistic expectation of improvement. Whatever the rights and wrongs of these arguments, the school improvement ‘movement’ needs to get a grip on the fact that for disadvantaged communities, half-hearted little-understood choice policies are absurd: having a choice between a poor school and a good school, whereas previously there was only a good one, does not increase well-being; neither does having a choice between three poorly-performing schools as opposed to two. And what use is the freedom to attend any school in a city for those without the wherewithal to organise family life around travel? Fundamentally, school choice is not about marketisation. It is about freedom. The latter is a complex notion; the former merely instrumental. The disappointment to date and the difficulty for school improvement is that fieldwork and theory has concentrated on marketisation and a forthright debate about school choice as freedom has not been had as school improvers rush to action on behalf of concerned governments facing the prospect of societal and economic decline as a result of inadequate public schooling. Most school improvement policies in the UK over the last fifteen years, for example, have involved efforts simply to marketise education because (it is claimed) the exigencies of competition ipso facto make public school systems more responsive: