The effects of Education Action Zones are not just a problem for 25 areas of the country. They are intended to be test-beds for future Labour policy for the whole education system - or to be more exact, they are a model for the future school system in working class areas.
The decision to hand schools to be run by private companies marks a historic break in Labourist education policy. It is a step that even Thatcher felt unable to take. Education Action Zones would become Education Profit Zones. But to make a profit, companies will want to take the opportunity offered by Labour to remove the obstacle of teachers' national pay and conditions.
We already know how this will WOrK. Labour has taken the idea from the United States, where state schools are already franchised out to private companies, including management companies, Procter and Gamble the detergent manufacturers, and Disney.
One of these companies, Edison, which runs 25 state schools in the US, is planning to bid for a Zone in Tameside, near Manchester, and has also made approaches to schools and LEAs in Surrey, Nottingham and Hackney. In the US, Edison schools have longer days and teachers are contracted out of union pay rates. Another American company, the Toledo Private Indistry Consortium, is involved in a bid in Bradford.
But there are plenty of homegrown British companies already making a profit of the schools, and now anxious to take full control of some. Labour has set up a new scheme, the Public Private Partnership Programme, to encourage them. the Centre for British Teachers, based in Reading, carries out school inspections, teacher trainconsultancy, and supply teaching. Says its chief executive, FOR AND EQUIPMENT "The market is opening up. principle there is no reason why private companies shouldn't run whole schools. No doubt they see their partnership with Lambeth LEA in its EAZ bid as a first • step. Of course contracting out the schools to the private sector is just the logical extension of what Labour, following on the Tories before them, has done in other areas of the public sector. They claim it is different from Tory privatisation because the schools will still be publicly owned and regulated. Labour's 'Third Way' says 'the job of government is to steer, not row'. The problem is that the steering ends up being driven by the overriding logic of profit, as we can see elsewhere in the neoliberal public sector.
But contracting out the schools is a risky political step. for Labour, and so is locally dismantling teachers' pay and conditions. Both of these already aroused vigit will be met by a around 50 bids often with private sector involveeducation businesses, in others they are companies like Lloyds and the TSB (Croydon) or the Optimum Health Trust (SouthNone of them are so far teachers' national about that at this stage anyway). of Labour's preferred model, and back for the government.
Private funding Zones will only receive £250,000 isn't enough, shared among 20 pliance in the way that Curriculum, but the alternative is sector will want to 'basic skills' (after all; the Tories' City Technology Colleges failed to attract much private funding), unless of course they • Education Action Zones (EAZs) are intended to
permits schools to opt out of the