Gabriel Heller

Monday

Gabriel Heller

Immigration helps explain Sweden’s school trouble

From our UK edition

Sweden’s education performance has faltered in the past decades, with scores tumbling in the OECD’s international Pisa survey since the early 2000s. Both the Guardian and the BBC have recently looked into this phenomenon. There’s no shortage of explanations for the poor results, but British enemies of school reform have latched on to one of them: the free schools reform of the early 1990s, which they claim sent the system into chaos. You’ll notice how the naysayers never give any evidence to back up their claims. This is unsurprising, since there isn't any to give. On the contrary, research indicates that free schools have to some extent cushioned Sweden’s fall.

Tuesday

Gabriel Heller

The psychosis of the PISA report and best practices

From our UK edition

The enemies of school reform have something of a champion in Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg. In a recent comment piece for the Guardian, he discusses his self-invented bogeyman, the ‘Global Education Reform Movement’ with the evil-sounding acronym ‘GERM’. GERM has failed, he says. In his story, choice, competition, and accountability have spread like a virus around the world, infecting education system after education system. But, according to Sahlberg, there’s no evidence the policies work! Only that they increase school segregation, which in turn may have a negative effect on equality in outcomes. He tries to quote the latest 2012 PISA survey to prove his point.

Tuesday

Gabriel Heller

Gove’s school choice can end social segregation. The old system entrenches it

From our UK edition

Like most foreigners who move to Britain, I was struck when I first arrived by how much people worry about which school their children go to. Even couples who don’t have kids seem to fret about where to send them. But now, working in the field of education reform, it makes sense to me. The disparity between a bad state school and a good one is huge, which in turn produces an enormous difference to the life chances of children attending them. It’s linked to money. To get into the good state schools here, you need to afford to live next to them. And if you live in a sink estate, the odds are that your children – no matter how bright – will be going to a sink school.

Friday

Gabriel Heller

What Stephen Twigg doesn’t understand about Sweden’s for-profit schools

From our UK edition

As a Swede, I’m always intrigued to hear the British Labour Party say how Sweden's free school system has been a disaster. Profit-making schools, says Stephen Twigg, are backfiring. But I’d like to pose a question. If Mr Twigg thinks that profitmaking state schools in my homeland are such a disaster – and one with “with dire consequences for parents and children” – then why does he think that the Swedes haven’t banned them? Has he, from his vantage point of Westminster, spotted a flaw that the Swedes have missed? Or could it be that he has grasped the wrong end of the stick?

Saturday

Gabriel Heller

The truth about Finland’s education miracle

From our UK edition

Does Finland have the best schools system in the world? There are many who think so, pointing to its place atop the PISA league tables and explaining this success by the supposed lack of Swedish-style competition. So why is Britain copying Sweden, runs the argument, with these private ‘free schools’ when it would do better to look at the less competitive Finnish model? Finland has become a pin-up for the anti-school choice movement, which strikes me as odd. I’m a Swede, working in London for the Centre for Market Reform of Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs, and I’ve recently written a book about school choice. For what it’s worth, here’s my take on Finland.