Commercial involvement in teaching set to rise?

Professionals in teaching jobs may increasingly find themselves working to commercial targets as well as educational ones, according to the Observer.

The newspaper suggests that state schools face a potential private-sector revolution following the news that a Swedish company given permission to run a school in Suffolk, expects to make millions of pounds of profit from the scheme.

It suggested that this will “open the floodgates” to greater commercial involvement in English schools under the educational reforms introduced by Michael Gove.

The education secretary has overseen the launch of more than 1,300 academies during his time in office and last week gave permission to Breckland Middle School in Suffolk to be renamed IES Breckland and run under a ten-year contract by Swedish firm Internationella Engelska Skolan (IES).

According to the news provider, a number of for-profit firms are now seeking to follow suit.

The news follows new league tables indicating that the number of students achieving good GCSEs at academies increased from 40.6 per cent last year to 46.3 per cent in 2010-11. ADNFCR-2164-ID-801278919-ADNFCR