Sir – Re councillor Waine’s letter on the ‘Diversity of Provision’ (February 3) — it reinforces my view that the real problem today rests in the fact that decisions so important to the quality of people’s lives are being made by politicians with expertise in rhetoric, but no real expertise in such critically important fields as education, economics, housing, welfare, transport etc.
Councillor Waine’s boast that the “council has, for some years now, welcomed a diversity of school provision” ignores the research evidence on the effectiveness of such provision when increasingly left up to market forces.
The most recent evidence from the OECD (‘Markets in education: an analytical review of empirical research’) states “when market mechanisms are introduced in education the effects as reported in empirical research are modest to say the least.
“After two decades of empirical research, the most interesting questions turns out to be: why are observed effects of market mechanisms on educational outcomes on the whole so small”. Many reviews on aspects of market mechanisms in education have come to similar conclusions (Belfield and Levin, 2002 etc). It is surely time for a different kind of democratic accountability in our local councils?
Frank Newhofer, Oxford
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