“In Sweden, the average cost of a municipal education follows the choices of parents. Even if they send their kid to a private school, that budget — about £6,500 — follows. To get the money, private schools are not allowed to charge top-up fees, and there is no academic selection. But it’s easy to get a licence to enter this system, and 1,100 new schools have sprung up because of it. Most, about 800 of them (Gove please note), are profit-making. Many are small schools but in big chains (some with turnovers of £100m and more), which actually have a successful model for organising and running schools, and take that successful brand to one school after another.” (03/16/10)