Will public opinion eventually turn to support free schools?

The first batch of the Government’s flagship free schools are opening their doors for the first time this month and it is clear that their success or failure will be a key benchmark for the Government’s education policy.

It is worth remembering however, that when we polled public opinion last summer only just over a third of people agreed with the idea of parents setting up and running schools. This was less support for the principle of free schools than for GP commissioning or the National Citizen Service.

On the suggestion that schools could be run by a range of providers – private companies, religious groups, charities or parent groups – support drops to only a quarter in favour of the idea of schools being setup by organisations other than local councils. Almost two thirds of people thought councils remained best-placed to run schools.

When asked which organisations should not run schools, religious organisations, private companies and parents came out on top with upper or middle class (AB) parents less convinced than parents in other socio-economic groups that parents running schools is a good idea.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, it is only really parents who want to get involved to any degree with running schools. Even then, however, only three in ten parents want more of a say in how schools are run and fewer than one in ten want to become actively involved.

It is also worth noting that our Public Sector Leaders Survey last month showed that nearly two-thirds of public sector senior managers and directors do not think that the government’s policies will improve the state of public services and concern is particularly pronounced within the education sector.

Education Secretary, Michael Gove, clearly hopes that free schools will help raise standards of education but the question is whether parents and communities will come on board and support the free schools in their area. As described above, some of our data suggests that he has a difficult task ahead in persuading people of his argument.

However, people are always concerned about changes to public services they hold dear, and are naturally cautious about new ways of doing things if they are unsure of their impact. Further, there is very low awareness of the extent to which the voluntary and private sectors are already involved in their provision. We know that discipline and standards of teaching are what the public values most in schools; if free schools can deliver on these key issues people may forget their initial concerns about the schools’ organisation and set-up.

Our last set of polling data last summer painted a fairly bleak picture but who knows, perhaps if we were to ask the questions again once people have had a chance to get used to the idea and seen the free schools up and running, time might have moved opinions on.