Sweden

Now the Wikileaks are beginning to become dangerous. Before, the leaks contained high-level tittle-tattle, confirmation of existing analyses and embarrassingly accurate portraits of world leaders. I still thought it wrong to regurgitate this data, as it will lead to more secrecy, bilateral problems and potentially even conflicts – the things that Julian Assange claims he is seeking to avoid. Yet I told NPR that the idea of prosecuting the Wikileaks founder for treason was far-fetched; he is not a US citizen and it was not clear to me what kind of charges could be brought against him in the US courts. Now, however, with the publication of data which will be useful background reading for any would-be terrorist, the situation has changed.

I travelled in from frozen Stockholm this morning. My colleague Mary Wakefield set out from County Durham. No prizes for guessing whose journey took more time due to snow. When my £38 norewgian.com flight arrived at Gatwick, the captain said: “Sorry, we’re going to be delayed. They can’t seem to find people to open the gate, they say they are short staffed.” The Swedes on the flight burst out laughing: welcome to Britain. Mary’s £107 train was two hours late arriving to the station, and spent a further two hours stuck in the snow. That the Swedes do better at us in the snow is no great surprise, but it’s odd to see them do better at supply-side economics.

The Times has a spread on free schools (p20-p21) today (£), focusing on the model of Kunskapskolan, one of the largest Swedish chains, who are setting up shop in Britain. "Pupils set their own homework, decide their timetables, set themselves targets and work at their own speed - oh, and they clock off at 2pm," says Greg Hurst, the paper's education editor. He visits one of their schools in Twickenham. "At the heart of the personalised learning", he says, lies a "one-on-one tutorial with a teacher for 15 minutes to review progress, weekly and long-term targets and timetables to meet them." A pupil, Lisa, is quoted saying: "You talk to the teacher and you cannot embarrass yourself. If you want to say something personal, you can say it to her.

Free schools are all well and good – but what about the schools that remain? Some CoffeeHousers raise this question in response to my earlier blog, and it’s important enough to deserve a post in itself. Because introducing new schools to compete with council schools is the best way of raising standards for all – and studies around the world prove this. The ‘free schools’ agenda is not some Govian brainwave, but a simple reform that is being enacted from Chile to Obama's charter schools. The fullest example of this has been in Sweden, which the Gove system is modelled on, where about 13 percent of upper secondary kids are now in free schools.